Just Fake It (And No One Will Know You're In Over Your Head)
by FortySevens
Summary: Darcy Lewis always knew her mother wasn't in the running for any Parent of the Year Awards, but after she left for college and the real world, it didn't really matter all that much. It didn't define her like it did when she was little. Until the day a very special package ended up on the figurative doorstep of Stark Tower, and each member of the Avengers be in for a lot...
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It was just another day in May when Pepper Potts stepped off the jet at Stark Industries' private airstrip at LaGuardia, the late afternoon sun warming her freckle-scattered face.

Happy jogged ahead of her to meet the car waiting on the tarmac while Thor's heavy footfalls echoed off the metal steps behind her, and Pepper let out a light sigh as she slipped into the car, stretching her legs out in front of her.

She kicked off her Jimmy Choos and curled her toes as Thor moved in next to her, shutting the door so Happy could drive toward the airport exit to Grand Central Parkway.

"I never realized how mentally taxing a day spent speaking could be," Thor pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, his other hand splayed against Mjolnir's side where it rested on the cushioned seat between them. "I should have taken more heart in my father's lessons when I was young."

Pepper let out a hollow laugh as she cracked open a bottle of water and took a delicate sip, "Dealing with our government is always going to be trying, but you did very well negotiating that protection agreement on Asgard's behalf. Odin will most definitely be proud."

He tipped his head, "Thank you for coming to advise me in Jane's stead, Lady Potts. I understand why she chooses to avoid that, and why Darcy has decided to alter her academic future to better assist our initiative."

"If Darcy wanted to continue with political science and get her masters, I'm sure she would have done great, but selfishly, I'm _so_ thrilled she decided to stay on with us and help me when I'm not in the city. Tony really needs the help being kept on track these days."

They chatted for a while as Pepper checked the messages she missed while they were transferring from the plane, and eventually Happy pulled the car up to the curb in front of Stark Tower.

Slipping her tablet into her briefcase's side pocket, Pepper reluctantly put her shoes back on before Thor helped her out of the car, "Thank you," she smiled, but it slipped off her face when she a little girl with disheveled brown hair get out of the taxi in front of their car before the yellow vehicle pulled back onto the street with a screech of its aged breaks.

"Thor," she caught the demigod's attention and tilted her head toward the girl standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk, a bright pink backpack resting on her shoulders while a matching trio of cheap vinyl suitcases rested at her feet.

She winced when a pair of the many Avengers groupies that were always lurking in the public areas in front of the building—eagerly awaiting the sighting of any one of the heroes and more than a few cheering behind the barricade for Thor's attention—moved around the little girl and another couple nearly knocked her off her feet.

Thor's brows were furrowed, but he accepted Pepper's briefcase and watched as she redhead walked over to the girl and bent down to her eye line, "Hello there," the girl blinked up at her with wide blue eyes. "Are you lost?"

Smiling toothily, she shook her head, tangled hair whipping over her shoulders, "Hello! My mommy said I'm saying with family at Stark Tower at One Avengers Plaza."

Pepper's heart froze when she saw the crinkled envelope in her outstretched hand, and she forced a deep breath into her lungs, and then two more when the first failed to return her to equilibrium.

While she had been prepared for this day long before she became the CEO of her boyfriend's company, years and years and years ago, when she had only just started out as the only personal assistant who didn't fall for Tony's charms—except eventually, she did—but that didn't mean she was ready for it.

She was never ready for it

For this very moment, staring her in the face with an innocent grin and tiny hands.

Pepper frowned at the quivering in her fingers as thought after worrying thought raced through her mind at speeds faster than Tony's suits could ever imagine reaching, and then she peaked down at the short missive inside the envelope, swallowing hard at the words she found.

Shaking out of it, Pepper finally looked back down at the smiling girl who was taking in the sights of the plaza with wide eyes, "Sweetheart," she said around the lump in her throat. "What's your name?"

"'m Charlotte."

"Well Charlotte, my name is Pepper. It's very nice to meet you," she straightened and held a hand out. "Why don't you come inside with my friend Thor and me, and we'll get you settled in."

The little one turned her wide eyes on the man who moved to stand at Pepper's shoulder and he gave her a little wave, "I know you!" Her voice was bright as she pointed a tiny finger. "That's Mew Mew!"

Thor's eyes flared and he favored Pepper with a questioning look, but the redhead's face was impassive as she took the girl's hand and led her through the crowd into the lobby.

He rushed to follow, leaving Happy to add the pile of pink suitcases to the cart already stacked with the pieces of luggage from their two-day trip to Washington, "Lady Potts," he said low once they reached the private elevators that led to the residential levels. "Is she-"

"I'm not quite sure what's going on," she said out of the side of her mouth while Charlotte stared with wide eyes back at the massive statue in the middle of the room. "But we will get to the bottom of this."

The elevator doors slid open, and Pepper nudged Charlotte in ahead of her, "JARVIS, the penthouse please."

* * *

Tony Stark's personal lab was a massive, high-ceilinged space with all the high-tech equipment you could shake a stick at.

And then some.

It didn't take him long to allocate corners for Bruce Banner and Jane Foster to work out of now they were full-time residents in the Tower.

On one side of the lab, Tony was tinkering under a console, his bare feet sticking out from one side as he argued quietly with JARVIS about something Darcy Lewis was only half paying attention to.

She sat at her desk—a microscopic space crammed between the edibles-only (_I'm serious you guys. PLEASE don't mix them up_) refrigerator and a massive pile of boxes that probably weren't going to be unpacked any time soon, if ever—going over Clint Barton's surprisingly long list of requirements for the new recurve bow the SI techs downstairs were developing for him.

Because apparently that was her life now, making sure that the new Avengers team didn't blow through Tony's billions before they even had the chance to save the world again.

After terrorists blew up his Malibu mansion—among other things—Pepper and Tony relocated to the renovated tower, joining Bruce—who hadn't really left after the now famous Battle of New York.

Seriously, there was an action blockbuster due to come out next summer.

Jane and Thor moved in not long after the pair of clusterfucks that hit London and D.C. within months of each other, and Darcy took the opportunity to come right along with them and take over the guest suite in their apartment.

After everything she went through with them, she wasn't about to say no to Jane's offer.

Clint then stumbled into town a few weeks after D.C., a postcard from Natasha in hand.

The neat print on the back of a photo of a generic beach with the words 'Best From Key West' ordered him to take his head out of his ass and bring it to the city from whatever desert he was sulking in or she was going to tie him up and send him to New York via shipping container.

That note now hung in a place of honor in the center of the refrigerator in the common kitchen, held up by a pair of spider magnets Darcy happened upon during the first few days she took to explore her new hometown.

She was finishing up with Clint—who was perched cross-legged on the topmost box of the pile to her right and flinging multicolored paperclips at her—when JARVIS stopped talking to Tony mid-sentence before the speakers adjusted to carry his voice throughout the entire room, "Ms. Potts and Lord Odinson have returned. They're requesting that everyone join them in the penthouse lounge."

Because there was one thing that could kick Jane out of a science-induced stupor these days, her head jerked up from where she was going over atmospheric readings on the rebuilding Bifrost with Bruce, "I thought they weren't due back until tomorrow," she mused as she turned off her tablet and set it aside.

Darcy smacked Clint with the pile of forms before she tossed them into her makeshift out-box—empty 72-packs of PopTarts really worked wonders, and hey, wasn't recycling great for the environment—and hopped off her stool, "I don't care, I just hope they ordered dinner."

Tony led the way off the elevator and into the penthouse—because it was his home, he liked to insist that he should _always_ be the first to set foot in it, and Darcy chalked it up to a combination of weird billionaire habits and his undiagnosed slash blatantly ignored PTSD—and Darcy almost ran into his back when he stopped short in front of the doors.

"Pepper, light of my life, my only everything," he gasped and dramatically pressed a hand to his chest. "If you're leaving me, couldn't you at least pack in the Rimowa luggage set I bought you last year?"

The woman in question was perched on the couch in the sunken lounge, her bare toes curled in the carpet, and her gaze flicked up from something on the coffee table to the pile of battered bags tucked under the entry table before she let out a delicate snort, "Why would I leave you if I couldn't take my twelve percent of the building with me?"

The others managed to get around Tony as he muttered something under his breath, and Darcy arched a brow when she saw Thor standing on the far side of the room, exuding deity with every breath even though his slacks were tousled and his shirt was untucked as he stared out the window.

Her frown deepened when she spied the back of the head of a little girl standing at Thor's right, her tiny hands pressed to the glass as she looked out to the city lit up in gold by the sunset.

"Who's the kid?" Clint asked the question rattling around her brain as he sidled over to the bar and hopped onto a stool, resting his bandage-clad right arm against the cool granite as he reached over the lip for a beer in the ice-filled sink.

Pepper stood, her hands clasped in front of her, but before she could say anything, the girl spun around, and Darcy smacked a hand over her mouth, "Oh my god! Charlotte, what are you doing here?"

She was stick skinny and pale, but there was no mistaking the girl's bright eyes and the wave in her tangled hair, and she grinned a mouth full of crooked teeth, "Darcy, Darcy!" She squealed as she ran across the room, her flip-flops slapping against the smooth concrete floors, before she flung her arms around Darcy's waist. "Mommy said I was going to stay with you! Like a vacation!"

Blinking once, Darcy shook her head hard before dropping to her knees and wrapping the girl in a proper hug, "That's such a great surprise Charlie!" Running a hand over her hair, she glanced over to Pepper and mouthed, "Where did you find her?"

The uneasy look on Pepper's face told her something was definitely wrong, and worry coiled in the pit of her stomach as she felt the weight of everyone's eyes on her.

Her mother didn't even _call_.

She pasted a grin on her face as she pulled back, her hands on Charlotte's shoulders, "What do you think of my friends, Kid?"

"Pepper and Thor are really nice! And I got to see Mew Mew!" She was nodding so fast Darcy thought her head was going to fly off. "And JARVIS! Did you know he's a computer? That's really cool!"

Darcy nodded, "He is," she angled Charlotte toward Jane, who stood at her side with her hands stuffed in the pockets of the oversized flannel shirt—one of Thor's—she wore over her t-shirt. "Do you remember Jane? We Skyped with you when we were living in New Mexico."

"Hi!"

Jane waved, and Darcy nodded slowly, "She's going to make you a snack while I talk to Pepper, okay?"

Charlotte took the hand Jane offered and they went into the kitchen, and Darcy nodded thankfully as she stood and made her way into the lounge where Tony and Bruce had joined Pepper and Thor.

"I _swear_ I had no clue she was coming," she hissed, anger flushing through her voice crossing her arms over her chest as she watched Jane help Charlotte onto a stool at the counter. "I had no idea they even left _Seattle_! And where the hell is my mother? Ugh! This is so like her."

Wincing, Pepper reached for the envelope resting on the slice of petrified tree that made up the coffee table, holding it in her hands as she explained how she and Thor found Charlotte outside the Tower.

"I've dealt with more than my fair share of potential 'accidental Stark' incidents," she rolled her eyes as Tony let out a derisive snort. "Over the years that it didn't occur to me that the name on the envelope and in the letter wasn't Tony's. I'm so sorry Darcy."

She waved away the apology as she pulled the piece of notebook paper from the envelope and glared down at her mother's nigh illegible cursive.

_Darcy,_

_I'm sorry I didn't call, but I need her to stay with you._

_You know I was never cut out for this, and you're in so much better a position to give her what she needs._

_I'm sorry and I do love you both,_

_Your mother_

"Oh are you serious right now," she dropped back onto the couch and read the letter again before she crumpled it up and tossed it aside. "Not five months after moving into the Tower and she decides that she's just _not cut out to be a parent?_ Jesus Christ!"

With a groan, she dropped her head in her hands and leaned back against the cushions, "Oh god."

A hand touched her shoulder, and she nearly flailed violently and jumped out of her seat, but instead managed to drop her hands to see Pepper's smiling face, "Everything will be just fine Darcy," she assured. "Charlotte is more than welcome to make her home here like you do."

Tony held a hand up, "Don't I get a-" he broke off at the pointed look Pepper leveled at him. "Never mind! The kid's more than welcome! The more the merrier. Except not, because I don't do diapers."

"Oh my god," she groaned again, smacking her forehead with one hand. "I can barely raise myself, let alone Jane, Tony, _and_ a genius four-year-old."

"Excuse me, but I don't need any minding."

All eyes turned to Tony, and despite the emotions churning in her chest and the fact that she kind of wanted to throw up, Darcy let out a snort, "And _you _are full of it," the fact that her sister was here smacked her in the face again, and she buried her face back in her hands. "Oh my god, what am I supposed to _do? _I don't even have a _bed_ for her. I live in Jane's guest room!"

The hand on her shoulder squeezed gently, "Darcy, we can remodel one of the guest floors for you both," Pepper said calmly. "It won't take long at all, and everything will be just fine."

Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath, "Thanks Pepper," she managed through her fingers. "I can't even, I just don't know what to _do_."

"Give it a few days, and we'll get you both resettled. You're not alone in this."

Darcy sighed again and shifted her fingers to press against her eyes to stop the throbbing that started as soon as she read the words on that stupid piece of crinkled paper.

The pattering of tiny feet forced her to drop her hands, and she plastered a smile on as Charlotte darted over, Jane at her heels, "Darcy, this place is really cool!" She gushed, her voice high. "Jane shared her chocolate PopTarts with me! Mommy _never_ buys chocolate PopTarts!"

"That's great, Kid," thanking Jane with a nod, she pulled Charlotte onto the couch next to her and then arched a brow when she saw Bruce and Tony looking at the little girl with matching looks of extreme curiosity on their faces. "Don't tell me you haven't seen a tiny human before."

Bruce tilted his head as he continued to look at Charlotte, "You said, 'genius'?"

Darcy ran her hand down the girl's hair, "Pretty sure. Remember how I said that Jane and I Skyped with her?"

"Yes."

"Well she was two," she resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the surprise that flicked across both faces. "She can probably use the iPad I bought her better than I can, and she doesn't even go to _school_ yet. She probably should. I should look into that if she's going to stay—_oh my god_."

Ignoring Tony's scoff at the Apple product and the following mutterings about how much better StarkPads were—StarkTech in general, really—Darcy pinched the bridge of her nose and looked back down at Charlotte, "You want to go on a tour, kid?"

"Yeah!"

* * *

The guest suite in Jane and Thor's apartment—also known as the set of small rooms that Darcy had called her home, a serious upgrade from staying on Jane's mom's couch—was like a really, _really_ nice room at a five-star hotel.

Not that she expected anything less since Pepper had _all_ the influence on furnishing the residential levels after the Battle of New York.

The room opened into the siting area arranged around the massive television that took up like, half the wall, while her bed took up the other half of the room, and the attached en suite was one of the biggest Darcy had ever seen.

Fresh from her bath, Charlotte was curled up on the massive couch that split the living area from the bedroom side, watching a cartoon about a girl—who apparently was also a sorcerer in training, because _of course_—who suddenly had to adjust to the life of a princess when her mother got married to their kingdom's king, while Darcy unpacked the tiny trio of suitcases she came with, the sparse piles of clothes arranged on the padded bench at the foot of her bed.

Sitting on her knees on the hardwood floor, Darcy grabbed the last suitcase by the closest wheel and dragged it to her side, a frown crossing her face when she discovered a thick, legal-sized manila envelope tucked in the bottom under a small pile of t-shirts.

"Hey Charlie?" She looked up as the girl poked her head over the back of the couch. "What's this?"

Blinking at the envelope, Charlotte shrugged and dropped back down, "Dunno," her voice was muffled and distant as she turned her focus back to her show, and the little sorceress and her friends were now harassing a young witch, which made zero sense. "Mommy said it was for you."

Darcy shifted off her knees and sat cross-legged as she picked at the tab, her jaw dropping a little when she found Charlotte's birth certificate, immunization records, social security card, _everything_.

And at the bottom, there was an even thicker packet of legal documents.

Her eyes scanned the paperwork, and she let out a quiet curse as she snagged her finger on one of the red tabs pasted next to a line awaiting—oh _seriously?_—her signature.

She jammed her finger into her mouth as the coppery taste of blood burst across her tongue, "Oh my god."

Charlotte popped back over up, "What's that?"

Letting the paperwork fall back into the envelope, Darcy shook her head and forced a smile to her face—like she'd been doing all afternoon.

It was really starting to make her head hurt.

"Nothing important, Kid," she stood and grabbed Charlotte around the waist, easily flipping her legs over her shoulder and tickling her stomach. "Come on, let's get you into bed."

The stick skinny girl—and good _god_, had her mother even been feeding Charlotte all this time?—looked so tiny as she curled up in the center of Darcy's massive bed, burrowing under the blankets and tucking her battered stuffed cow against her side, "I'm going to run upstairs for a little while, but if you need anything, ask JARVIS, and he'll let me know, okay?"

Charlotte grinned wide as she sat back up and held her arms out, "I want a hug and a kiss!"

With a laugh that was probably the first genuinely happy sound she made all afternoon, Darcy did as asked, "Good night Kid, I love you, and I'm really happy you're here."

"Love you too!"

Tucking the blankets back up, Darcy smacked another kiss to Charlotte's forehead before she swiped the envelope off the floor, glaring down at it as JARVIS wordlessly dimmed the lights and she slipped out of the suite.

Jane and Thor weren't in the apartment when she stepped out, and she made her way out to the elevators, still pondering what the paperwork _meant_ as she asked the AI to take her back to the penthouse.

The doors opened seconds later, and the other members of the Avengers residence were still scattered about the living room, Jane and Bruce bent over that tablet from the labs while Clint was mixing drinks for Thor at the bar, and Pepper and Tony were curled up on the couch.

Jane looked up as the elevator dinged, "Is Charlotte asleep?"

"Out like a light before I left the room," rolling her eyes, she padded in. "She actually thinks she's on _vacation_. Ugh, I could kill Mom."

Pepper looked up and nodded with her chin at the enveloped she clutched in a white-knuckled grip, "What is that?"

"I was hoping that you, with your much more advanced knowledge of legal _whatever_, could explain some of the paperwork, and maybe confirm that they're not what I think they are," she muttered as she stepped down and held the thick packet out to her.

Passing her tablet to Tony, Pepper's brows flew to her forehead as she flipped through the first few pages, swallowing hard before she looked back up, "Oh, I'm so sorry."

She flopped onto the couch with a groan and stared up at the ceiling, ignoring whomever it was that sidled up next to her until they pressed a cool glass against her fingers, and she drank it down.

"Thanks," she found Clint at her side, and he handed her the glass in his other hand, trading the empty with another full one.

Pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand, she took a short sip from glass number two, "Pepper, _please_, for the love of all that is holy, tell me that it's not what I think it is."

She sighed, "Your mother wants to sign Charlotte's custody over to you."

"Oh hell."

The room had gone silent, and Jane wordlessly passed her tablet off to an equally stunned Bruce before she made her way over, "Oh Darcy."

Ignoring her, she downed the rest of the amber liquid in her glass, wrinkling her nose as the burn seared the back of her throat, "I mean _seriously_," she shrugged Jane's arm off her shoulders and scooted away. "This is some drug-fueled nightmare spawned from a lab accident. This can't really happening to me. My mother can not _possibly_ be this stunningly irresponsible."

Tony leaned around Pepper and rested his elbows on his knees, "I'm sure we can track her down. In fact, JARVIS and I will have to have a long discussion if he _can't _find her."

Throwing her arms up, Darcy pushed off the couch and started pacing up and down the length of the sunken lounge, her toes bashing against the side of the concrete steps on her first pass, "What's the fucking point? Crazy woman made it clear she doesn't want Charlie anymore. What am I supposed to do? Force her into responsibility?"

"Worked for me," he shrugged.

"Well a billion-dollar corporation isn't exactly the same as the welfare of a small child."

Pepper clasped her hands together, "Not that it matters, but you'd be surprised how similar it really is."

On her fourth pass, Darcy gave up and dropped onto the step, burying her face in her hands, the glass she still held cool on her forehead, "I'm going to need the whole damn bottle if I'm going to feel any better about this," she scoffed. "Except I can't, because hungover!Darcy can't handle people, let alone a needy four-year-old. Damn that woman."

Jane rushed across the room and sat next to Darcy, nudging her gently with her shoulder before she moved back a little to give her some space, "Whatever you decide, you know we're going to support you, right?"

"She's my little sister. What am I supposed to do, send her away?" She tried to rub away the pounding under her right eye, but it persisted. "Pepper, can I have the paperwork please?"

"Are you sure?" She asked as she stood and grabbed a pen that was lying on the coffee table.

Sighing heavily, she nodded, "If that's the way she wants to play it, then fine. It's _fine_. I'll sign the papers and I'm so beyond done with her. Charlotte can decide whether or not she wants to track her down again when she's old enough to understand that she was _abandoned_ by her own mother. Good god, she left her right out in the middle of the street. Ugh."

Her jaw ticked as she accepted the forms and scribbled her name and date next to each tiny flag—especially the one dotted with her blood—her fingers clamping down at the edges of the paper and the words blurred from the angry tears that flooded her eyes.

She jumped when Jane plucked the pen and packet of papers from her hands, "Take a deep breath," she ordered sharply as she squeezed Darcy's shoulders. "You _need_ to calm down Darcy."

"But how the hell am I supposed to be a _parent_?" She screeched. "I never wanted any of this. I _don't _want any of this."

Pepper padded over and kneeled in front of them, "You've got us here to give you all the help you need. All of us. We'll do everything in our power to make sure Charlotte has everything she needs. You have nothing to worry about."

Eventually, she rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath, the force of it sending her shoulders all the way up to her ears, "Pepper Potts, you are a damn super hero. Don't let anyone tell you different."

Blushing, especially when Tony chuckled in agreement, Pepper placed a hand on Darcy's knee and patted in gently, "You're too kind. Why don't we have lunch tomorrow and discuss the renovations? There's plenty of room in the empty apartment on the floor we set aside for Steve."

Tony let out a derisive snort, "If he ever decides to stop running after that tall, cranky Russian of his."

Tilting her head, Darcy smirked, "I'm so telling Agent Romanov you called her that."

"But I didn't-"

"_She _won't know that."

He let out an affronted huff, "_Not_ fair!"


	2. Chapter 2

It was eleven-thirty on a Saturday morning in August, and Darcy was in the kitchen making lunch.

Because apparently, that was her life now.

Charlotte sat at the breakfast table that took one most of one side of the large, sun-drenched space, rubbing out a red crayon on a page torn out of her brand new Avengers coloring book.

Thank you Tony, for snapping up all of the team's merchandizing copyrights so the Avengers could accrue income to fall back on even without the assistance from the agency formerly known as SHIELD.

In the first few weeks after she made the move from London, Darcy tried to help him and JARVIS track down the bottomless hole of misappropriated SHIELD funds that Hydra absconded with, but they hadn't had any luck.

It was like it all just _disappeared_, which wasn't actually possible.

But these days, that was neither here nor there.

After the first week of what was probably the longest three months of her life—including the aftermath of _everything _that happened in Puente Antiguo where there had been multiple spans of days where no one got _any_ sleep—Darcy had been ready to tear her hair out and drink the entirety of Tony's extremely impressive wine collection.

If there was one thing she'd picked up from her own upbringing—see raising herself while her mother didn't—and the continued responsibilities she had with Jane, Tony, and Bruce, it was that she was _not_ cut out to be a mother.

A slightly frazzled and constantly exasperated caretaker, she most definitely was, why bother trying to deny it?

After all, her default method of calming a manic Jane was to shove a latte and a PopTart in her hands and send her down to Thor.

She was just _not_ the most nurturing woman in the building by _any_ means, and that was _fine_.

There were people with worse quirks.

But it was hard enough when she couldn't just tell a tantrum-having kid to just suck it up and deal with whatever Charlotte chose to get upset about.

She was a great kid—she loved Charlotte to pieces because how could she not—but _everyone _had a limit, and on most days, Darcy reached hers quickly.

Some days were bad enough that even _Bruce_ was offering to teach her some of the meditation techniques he used to keep the Other Guy at bay.

Pepper, ever the godsend—and Darcy still had _no _idea how she got the empty apartment renovated in mere _days_—suggested that she take advantage of Stark Industries' employee daycare program, which would not only give Charlotte the chance to spend time with kids her own age, but more importantly give Darcy a few hours a day to herself.

And with JARVIS being the best built-in nanny there ever way, Darcy could _try_ to take care of her scientists at odd hours without worrying that Charlotte was getting into trouble.

Her mind raced as she cut a plate of washed vegetables to go with the grilled cheese that was finishing up on the fancy cooktop island.

How in the world was she going to tell the girl that she _wasn't_ going back to Washington to start Pre-K come the end of the month, especially since Charlotte was _so damn excited_ that it was pretty much all she could talk about?

The fact that she should have been in _kindergarten_ by this point, two months away from her fifth birthday, was neither here nor there.

How in the world did _no one_ in their cozy—and more importantly, _nosy_—little neighborhood not notice that Charlotte wasn't going to school?

Then again, no one really noticed when she started walking herself to and from school in first grade; so basically, her neighbors were just as bad as her mom.

But even after two and a half months of venting to her bathroom mirror, to Jane and Thor, and even a few staged conversations in the elevator with JARVIS, Darcy was no closer to finding a way to explain to her that their mother just flat out didn't want to raise her anymore.

So much so, that after dumping Charlotte on the Tower's doorstep, Carissa Lewis and the taxi she was riding in dropped right off the face of the damn planet, like she never existed.

And it wasn't like she could just _show_ Charlotte the letter when she could barely read.

And that was another matter of contention, because really, a four-year-old, especially one as _aware_ as Charlotte, should at least know _some_ of the alphabet at this point.

Sighing as she ran face-first into the same mental wall she'd been banging her head against for weeks, she turned away from the cutting board and scooped up the spatula before making her way back to the skillet.

If she ever saw her mother again, she swore she was going to _strangle_ the woman.

Sliding the toasted cheesy goodness onto a waiting plate, she pulled a knife out of the block and sliced it in half, "Order up Charlie! Crayons away!"

Halfway through cutting the sandwich into manageable pieces and waiting for it to cool off a bit, JARVIS piped up, "Ms. Lewis, as the only affiliate currently in residence, I feel it prudent to inform you that Captain Rogers has just returned from his trip abroad."

"Cool, cool. Think he wants a sandwich or six? I'm sure home cooking isn't easy to come by in butt-fu-" remembering that there was a parrot in the room, she wrinkled her nose. "_Fudge_ nowhere."

"I would not know. He has an associate with him."

Her brow cocked as she snagged a piece of the crust with burnt cheese that Charlotte wouldn't eat anyway—picky weirdo—and popped it in her mouth, "Oh really? Is it that Wilson guy from the cluster-mess in D.C.?"

"No. I have been unable to confirm, but I can extrapolate and infer from the information that Agent Romanov leaked that it is Sergeant Barnes."

Darcy blinked and spared a glance to the arched doorway that led to the elevators, "Guess this means things around here are going to get a little more exciting, aren't they J?"

"I'm not entirely sure what you're insinuating, Ms. Lewis."

She smirked, "I'm sure you're not."

As she handed the plate to Charlotte, the chime on the elevator rang out before JARVIS' muted voice greeted the new arrivals, and Darcy started in on buttering more slices of bread for another round of grilled cheeses when she heard footsteps approach the kitchen.

"Ms. Lewis? I didn't think anyone was supposed to be home today."

Steve looked more than a little travel weary as he stepped into the kitchen, concern flashing across his face when he saw it occupied.

Last she knew, from a conversation she overheard—or was _allowed_ to overhear, because _spies_—when Clint was on the phone with Natasha a couple weeks ago, Steve had been in the middle of lord knows where, Europe, and or some of the countries that used to make up the Iron Curtain.

"It's _so _wonderful to see you again too, Cap," she grinned, and then continued before he could stumble through an awkward apology. "Pepper is making Stark live up to his responsibilities and actually attend SI's bi-annual board meeting, and Jane, Thor, and Banner have been up north doing something related to atmospheric distortions for the last two days. I'm not sure where Clint is, but he promised to bring back cupcakes for Charlotte, and JARVIS won't let him back in the building if he doesn't."

Steve blinked at her while the man behind him silently slipped inside, and Darcy watched as he took note of the room's occupants and its entrances with a practiced, cautious eye.

She waved a hand, "Anyway, can I interest you and your friend in a sandwich comprised of melted cheese and happiness?"

The man at Steve's shoulder—like she didn't know exactly who he was—narrowed his eyes at Charlotte as she ate her lunch with her back to them all, completely oblivious to the newcomers as she stared wide-eyed at the cartoon playing on her StarkPad.

Since she moved in, Tony decided to indoctrinate Charlotte against any and all Apple products—including Darcy's beloved recovered iPod—and Darcy was more than a little worried she was getting too spoiled.

Then again, she really did need that new wardrobe full of absolutely adorable clothes that Pepper gave her to commemorate her first month in New York.

"That's my little sister Charlotte," Darcy cleared her throat to get her attention. "Charlie, say hi to the Captain and his friend."

She glanced up and chirped a greeting to both men before she fell back into her own little world, and Darcy nodded with her chin as she put the butter aside and grabbed a block of some fancy cheese Tony kept in stock, "Your turn Cap."

"Really, you can call me Steve," he shifted back and placed a hand on the other man's shoulder, and Darcy didn't miss how he flinched at the contact. "This is Bucky. He's, we fought together back in the, uh," he looked back at Bucky helplessly as his response wavered before dying off.

"During World War Two," Darcy suppressed the urge to roll her eyes as she finished his sentence when Bucky didn't. "I studied history during my aborted attempt to get a degree in political science, so I know exactly who he is. Also, I'm going to pretend I didn't tell you exactly that when you visited Thor and Jane in London."

She turned her attention to Bucky, "Now you sir, you look like you need a shower, some comfort food, and _all_ the alcohol in the tri-state area. We'll start with the sandwich, and I'm not taking no for an answer."

He remained silent, his eyes flicking back and forth around the room, and Darcy's arched eyebrow rose higher toward her hairline as she glanced back at Steve, "What's his deal?"

"I think he's a little concerned because you've kind of been waving that knife around since we walked in."

Oh.

"My bad," she whipped the blade around and stepped aside, placing it on the counter before stepping back so it was out of reach. "Better?"

Bucky was still silent, but his shoulders dropped a fraction, and he looked a little less like he was a heartbeat away from stabbing her, or running away, or shitting himself, and Steve smiled, "Thank you, Ms. Lewis."

"Shit Rogers," she lowered her voice so Charlotte wouldn't overhear. "Ms. Lewis is a psychotic dumbass who dumped her four-year-old on her twenty-six-year-old daughter because she apparently 'couldn't handle parenting' a second time. For the love of all that is holy, please call me Darcy."

"Oh," and now he kind of looked like he wanted to run and hide. "I'm sorry?"

She waved a hand in dismissal before going back to the sandwiches she was prepping for the stove, "Long story short, you missed a few things during your whirlwind road trip to find your wayward bestie. How 'bout I make you guys some lunch and we talk about _those_ exploits instead of the fact that I literally want to murder my mother."

Bucky made like, half of an expression at her words, "Figurative literal murder, I promise," she smirked. "While I'm sure Stark would donate some of his billions to my legal support, I have enough to deal with right now taking care of him and my other scientists."

Steve blinked, then turned back to Bucky and nodded toward the bar stools tucked under the island opposite Darcy, "We _should_ probably eat," he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "It's been a long couple days."

Bucky's booted feet made no noise as he shuffled into the room, keeping a wary eye on Charlotte as he shifted onto the stool by the wall that kept everyone in view, and Steve followed, dropping their bags in the doorway before he sat down with a stool between them.

"But, what about your father?" Steve asked, and he had this painfully earnest look on his face that made her feel a little sick. "Is he in yours and Charlotte's lives?"

She shrugged a shoulder, "For all I know, _Tony _is my father," she rolled her eyes. "But not really, and JARVIS, _please_ don't go fishing. Let's just say that mommy dearest doesn't know who my dad _or_ Charlie's dad actually is. There's a gaping hole on both our birth certificates. Woo-hoo."

Steve frowned, "Oh. I'm sorry. That must have been difficult."

"It's whatever," she drawled pointedly because subject _so_ over, as she dropped two slices of bread on the skillet before digging into a cabinet for one more. "Five each? Ten each? Twenty? Any special requests for toppings? If you can think it, we probably have it. And I do mean that literally, have you _seen_ the pantry?"

Looking as overwhelmed as Darcy felt, Steve glanced at Bucky, watching as his brow twitched, which he seemed to take as some sort of response, "Why don't we just start with a couple? And uh, plain is just fine Ms., I mean, uh, Darcy."

As she worked, Darcy kept watch on Bucky out of the corner of her eye, telegraphing each and every move she made, using every skill she picked up in dealing with how trigger-happy Clint got before his first three cups of coffee.

"All done!" Charlotte chirped a few minutes later as she hopped off her chair and grabbed her plate, taking it into the kitchen and dropping it in the sink with an unexpected clatter that made Bucky jump.

"Grab a chair and come help me, Kid," Darcy said as she gestured to her right side with her elbow.

With a nod, Charlotte ran back around the island, unaware that Steve was watching her as he leaned over the counter and grabbed half a slice of cheese lying on the cutting board, "You never mentioned you had a sister."

"I came home from my second junior year of college and found out that mumsy was eight months pregnant, and, like I said, the mystery sperm donor had long since flown the coop. It was great, except, you know, not at all. A few months later I ended up in New Mexico with Jane and the rest is history."

She lifted Charlotte onto the chair and patted her head, "You're on cheese layering duty, Kid. The more the better, these two eat like Thor does."

"Okie dokie!"

The first two sets of sandwiches were sizzling away on the skillet, and Darcy fiddled with the stove's heat settings as she looked up at Steve, "So," she drawled. "Do any good sight seeing while you were away?"

Steve leveled her with a bland look, and she shrugged, "What? No one is going to judge you if you decided to take twenty minutes to have a look around. I mean, dude, _Europe._ Have you seen _Eurotrip _yet? You should add it to that cute list you've been making."

"Darcy," he heaved a put-upon sigh.

"Come on, the only reason Bucky's sitting here watching me cook right now is because this is where he _wants_ to be," she looked up and waited for his nod of agreement.

And then she remembered who she was dealing with and went on anyway, "You _know_ I saw the footage from D.C. and read some of the zillion and a half files Natasha released. I mean, it was like something straight out of those spy thrillers I don't have time to read anymore."

She grabbed the spatula and eased one side of the sandwich onto its made before scooting the entire thing onto the plate Charlotte slid toward her, and then did the same with the other, "Here you are. Round one."

As she put the plate in front of Bucky, a knife sprang into his right hand from fucking _nowhere_.

She snatched her hands away, taking a step back from the stove, "If you don't like grilled cheese, you could have said something, or you know, frowned in my general direction," she muttered trying to keep herself calm so Charlotte wouldn't notice. "Unlike most people my age, I'd like to think I could cook more than just the basics."

Bucky scowled down at the pieces of bread and the cheese oozing out the sides like it offended him personally, "There are fourteen ways to compromise both the bread and the cheese with supplies found in this kitchen," his voice was a harsh rasp, like he didn't use it.

Which was a sickening non-surprise.

"The grilled cheese isn't _compromised_," Darcy looked at Steve, who looked like he was ready to jump at Bucky in case he lashed out. "It isn't. Why would I do that to the best meal ever? That would be mean."

Steve ignored her, "You _need_ to eat something Bucky. If Darcy gets you something unopened, will you?"

"I'm functional."

"Well you won't be if you keep this up," Darcy muttered, and then turned to Charlotte. "Kid, grab me another block of cheese and some bread from the pantry, yeah? Something unopened."

There probably wasn't a lot of wisdom in keeping her in the room with a guy who single-handedly destroyed a major city block and put Steve in the hospital, but hey, there was a massive granite island between them.

And a Steve.

Or maybe, after so many years in this world, she was just crazy.

That was probably it.

Charlotte came back with more bread and some unopened sharp cheddar, and Darcy grinned as the girl climbed back up on the chair, and she juggled the block of cheese in one hand before she placed it in front of Bucky, easing the plate he scowled at in front of Steve for him to eat instead, "How's this look?"

He reached out, frowned, and then switched hands when he realized he started with his left, and glared down at the block, turning it over and over before he nodded once as he put it back down, "It is adequately wrapped and doesn't show any signs of tampering."

"Well _yeah_, Pepper would castrate Tony if he tried to kill me," Darcy chuckled. "You want slicing duty or am I allowed to take the knife again?"

She waited and watched Bucky glance between her and the knife before he placed his own back on the island and nodded once.

Grabbing the spread and the dullest butter knife in the kitchen, Darcy passed them to Charlotte for the bread and started in on the _not compromised cheese_, and within minutes, two more sandwiches were sizzling away on the stove.

Eventually, Steve finished off one half of sandwich number one-of-umpteenth, and cleared his throat, "So how is, Ian was it? Is he still in London?"

"Ugh," Darcy flinched, her eyes flicking to Bucky, who seemed to be content with ignoring them as he ate, and she rolled her gaze back to Steve. "So I guess that means you didn't hear about the thing that happened while you were busy _not_ being a tourist."

Immediately, concern flashed across his face, his eyes sparking with a new level of attention on her, "What happened?"

She huffed a sigh and grabbed another slice of cheese to snack on, "After the _Intern_ was done basking in the glory of your biceps, he remembered that he was a disciple of the big H and tried to steal Jane's research. Oh, and kill us in our sleep."

Steve blinked before he translated the meaning behind her words, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh. So ugh," she waved a hand in dismissal, because she _despised_ talking about Ian. "And for the record, I'd like to think that it was an aberration and not at all due to my judgment being subpar. My judgment is _awesome_. But anyway, I got to taser him before Thor dealt with him, and now we're all here. In this kitchen, eating."

Charlotte grabbed the hem of Darcy's sweater and tugged, "Can I have a snack?"

"Excuse you, you _just_ had lunch," she quipped as she eased another sandwich on Bucky's plate.

Apparently after one sandwich, he realized how actually hungry he _was_, and Darcy really didn't want to know what he'd been living off of since he slipped Hydra's leash.

Charlotte rolled her huge blue eyes and stamped her bare foot against the seat of the chair, "But lunch isn't a _snack_."

Darcy rolled her eyes right back before looking at the men across from her, "See what I have to deal with? You're lucky you don't have siblings."

With a short laugh, Steve shook his head, but broke off when Bucky frowned and dropped his half-eaten sandwich back onto the plate, "I-" his eyes were wide as he broke off and swallowed hard.

"Buck?"

His shoulders were a tense line as he eventually craned his head toward Steve, "_I_ had a sibling?"

Darcy winced.

Of _course_ her offhand comment about family and _not _her blatant reference to his former captors would trigger the poor guy.

She mouthed an apology to Steve as he reached out and to put a hand on Bucky's arm before he thought better of it and let it fall to the counter between them, "You did. Her name was Rebecca."

"I-I don't-" his eyes darted back over the exits again, and Darcy curled her fingers around Charlotte's arm, ready to pull her away from the counter as his shoulders tensed up to his ears. "I don't _remember_."

Bucky squeezed his hands to fists, and Darcy heard a low, dull sound from his left side, gears grinding under his ratty, oversized windbreaker, "Hey Charlie, go get a snack and take it in the other room," she muttered. "Go enjoy that Tony's got all the TV channels known to man and most to monkey."

"But-"

"_Go_."

Seconds later, she was gone, snack in hand, and Darcy looked on as smoke rose from Bucky's shoulder, the mechanics of what was obviously his metal arm whirred and grinded into a high screech.

She turned her frown on Steve, "Is he going to be okay?"

He kept his focus on Bucky, ready to move and defend Darcy if he needed to, "His arm was damaged," he said quietly. "He agreed to come here so Stark could take a look at it."

The limb in question twitched hard, and Steve made to reach out for it again, "Bucky," he drew his hand back. "You need to stay calm or it's going to get worse, remember."

Darcy flinched at the word, but Bucky's attention was focused on the space between him and the counter, his mouth moving slowly even as he remained silent but distressed by whatever he was recounting to himself.

"I don't _remember_."

"I _know_," Steve made to reach out again, but squeezed his hand into a fist. "Bucky look at me. You came because we can help you here. We _will_ get you the help you need."

His body shook with the force of the shudder that rocked through him, and his eyes flicked to the hand resting by his arm, "There's nothing to _help_," he rasped. "Help is for humans. I am _not_ human anymore."

Darcy felt sick at the look on his face, and Steve swallowed hard, "Yes you are Bucky," he insisted. "You saved my life. You wouldn't have pulled me from the river if we weren't."

It took a while, but he finally looked up and at Steve, "I'm _not_ him. I can't be. Even if you fix me, I can't be him," he looked back down to the plate and pushed it across the counter. "I'm not hungry anymore."

Just as Darcy was sure he was going to flip out and run off—like out a window and scaled down the side of the building or something equally ridiculous—Bucky heaved a heavy sigh, blinked twice, and looked back up, "I am, I am functioning within acceptable parameters."

"Bucky, your arm caught on _fire_ yesterday."

He looked down at the limb, his gloved fingers splaying shakily against the granite before he forced them back into a loose fist, "The statistical probability of that reoccurring with the repairs you and I were able to make is zero point zero-two-five percent."

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Darcy flicked the stove off, "As reassuring as that may be, I should probably call Tony. You'll be his number one favorite person in existence for giving him an excuse to cut out on his meeting."

"I'd really rather not interrupt," Steve started, but Darcy cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"As much as I have had first-hand experience with the building's fire suppression systems and I know full well that they work perfectly, one of Tony's rules is that people aren't allowed to catch fire on the premises. Especially when it's not his fault."

Steve looked like he was about to argue again when Bucky shrugged and muttered, "You heard the lady, punk."

Surprise smacked Steve in the face as he looked at Bucky before blinking out of it and shaking his head, "All right, yeah," he turned to Darcy. "Could you call him then, please?"

She flipped her phone out of her back pocket and unlocked it, "You won't regret it," she frowned and tapped her phone against her mouth. "Okay, maybe a little. I heard about that pissing contest on Helicarrier 1.0."

Steve rubbed his hand over his eyes, "I'd rather not talk about it."

Looking between the amusement on Darcy's face to the annoyance blooming across Steve's, Bucky arched a brow, "I am not supposed to be surprised, I don't think?"

Eyes flaring wide, Darcy shook her head and went back to her phone.

Everything was going to be _just damn great_ when Tony got back.

Or, more than likely, the building was going to explode.

She put the phone to her ear in time to hear him say, "_Lewis, please tell me the world is ending._"

Yes, the building was probably going to explode.

* * *

Thankfully, the building _didn't_ explode. Yet.

Not that Darcy was technically privy to what happened once Tony got back—in obnoxiously record time via a new suit he apparently kept in the trunk of his car—and he and Steve managed to coax an extremely reluctant Bucky into the lab before sealing it off.

And that's why it was important to be nice to the computer system that ran the entire household.

"I'm sorry, I just can't wrap my head around this," Jane said as she sipped her wine, the sounds of Thor clattering around in the kitchen as he made dinner—along with being the heir to a glittering otherworldly kingdom, he was a _fantastic _cook, who knew?—echoing faintly into the sitting room of their suite, a floor above the one Darcy and Charlotte moved into.

Looking away from the breathtaking view of the city skyline—she was obsessed, so sue her—Darcy shrugged and tapped her fingers against the side of her own glass, "It's not like it's rocket science, which I _know_ you understand. They got in from _wherever_ they were and I made them lunch. I didn't go out of my way or anything, I was already cooking for Charlie."

"He was a Hydra assassin for seventy years!"

"Not willingly," since Charlotte had long since been tucked into bed and was most definitely asleep, Darcy rolled her eyes as she took along sip of the cabernet she and Thor pilfered from Tony's not-so-secret stash. "And assassins need to eat too. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Agent Romanov could eat Thor under the table if she really wanted to."

Jane spared a look over her shoulder to the kitchen, "I don't think it's the same thing."

"Well I don't think Steve would have brought him here if he was really a threat."

"Darcy, you said he pulled a _knife_ on you."

She snorted, "I think he was more threatened by the sandwich than by me. Pretty sure he knows that the only way someone like _me_ is going to get the upper hand on someone like him would be by compromising his food. Which I wouldn't," she said pointedly in case he was somehow listening, because _spies._ "Because that would be rude."

Jane narrowed her eyes at something she heard in Darcy's tone, "Are you really okay with him being here with Charlotte around? I know we're all handling things a little differently since she got here. Even _Tony's _being more responsible with what projects he takes out of the lab these days."

She shrugged and drank down the rest of her glass, "I'm fine with her around Bruce, and let's be real here, it's basically the same thing. At least Barnes isn't going to get ten feet tall and green when he gets snippy."

"Yes, but-"

"I'm not worried, okay?" She cut Jane off, because when she got going, no matter the subject, it was hard to get her to stop.

And wasn't that a law of motion or something?

"I mean, he basically ignored her then entire time he was in the kitchen with us, which in retrospect, may not have been the best idea I ever had, but whatever. It's _fine_."

Eventually, they heard the thump of the oven door closing before Thor made his way into the living room, a mug of beer in one hand and the half-full bottle of wine she and Jane opened earlier in the other.

"Thanks," she murmured as she took the bottle and refilled her glass before topping off Jane's, pointedly ignoring the face she made when she filled it all the way to the rim.

Clad in sweats and a t-shirt, Thor took the seat between Jane and the arm of the couch, and she curled up against his side as he settled an arm around her, "We haven't discussed it yet Darcy, but for whatever it may mean in your realm, Charlotte _is_ under Asgardian protection, just as you and Jane and Erik are."

She rubbed her fingers down the bridge of her nose, "I know. Thanks big guy."

He grinned around a swallow of beer and tipped his head, "Of course. Have you given any thought to her schooling? I know you said she was behind due to the circumstances of her upbringing."

"You don't know the half of it," she grumbled. "She's not as behind as I first thought, which is great. And Pepper gave me a list of some disgustingly competent tutors to catch her up if she needs it, along with a bunch of schools Stark Industries can get her into."

"Anything sound promising?" Jane asked, her eyes flicking to Darcy's tablet, which was propped on the coffee table against the pile of paperwork and science journals she kept there.

Darcy rolled her eyes, "They _all_ do," she snorted into her glass. "I'm leaning toward the Constance Billard School for Girls. Disgustingly good graduation rate, through the roof SAT and ACT scores, easily secured campus, and I'm pretty sure the entire student body is spawned from the richest of New York's elite, so at least she'll be around kids with parents as security-conscious as we have to be."

"Sounds like you've already made your decision."

She shrugged, "I'm a little out of my depth here, okay a _lot_, but it feels right. Tour I took the other day pretty much has me convinced."

"Your instincts are unlikely to steer you wrong," Thor grinned. "They didn't when we first met."

Smirking, she wrinkled her nose at him, "I sure as hell hope so. I'm going to talk to Pepper and finalize all the paperwork on Monday," she muttered around a jaw-cracking yawn. "Crap. I'd better get to bed. God this pseudo-parent think is making me super lame."

Stretching her legs out in front of her until the feeling in her feet returned in the form of sharp pins and needles, Darcy got up from her perch, leaning down to hug Jane and clasp hands with Thor before he stood and walked her out.

"Sleep well, Darcy," he hugged her again. "All will settle down soon enough."

"I think Pepper said that three months ago, but thanks," she grinned, throwing a final wave at Jane over her shoulder as she made her way to the elevator at the end of the hall, low strains from an acoustic guitar slipping into the space from Clint's apartment.

As the elevator made the quick trip downstairs, Darcy flicked through the Twitter feed on her phone— AvengerSightings was hilarious in all the ways it was almost always _wrong_, HulkPants kept throwing theory after bizarre theory about how said garment could flagrantly defy just about every law of physics, CapDoesntKnow had some pretty hilarious memes of Steve's imagined reactions to modern-era technology and media, while ShitStarkSays was flat out the best thing on the Internet.

And knowing his narcissism, probably run by Tony himself.

So she didn't notice the person standing just outside the elevator doors until she stepped right into someone's arm.

"Oh crap!"

Her free hand flew to her forehead after it rebounded off something _hard_, and she blinked away the pain to see the sleeve of a loose gray Henley taking up most of the space in front of her.

"Er, Bucky?"

He took a step back, angling his left arm—and holy shit that thing really hurt—away from her, "Sorry."

"No, that's all on me, I wasn't watching where I was going," she grinned up at him, because he was probably not entirely comfortable with people who weren't well, Steve.

Then, she blinked, "Wait, what are you doing down here?"

"That is my residence," he pointed to the door across the hall from hers.

Right, they were saving the other apartment for whenever Steve decided to show back up.

Cool.

Bucky's hair was wet and tied back, and he'd not only shaved, but also no longer looked like he was on the run, even if his black sweat pants were tucked into the calf-high combat boots he wore when they arrived.

"You do not possess many relevant survival skills," he finally went on, and then looked her up and down again, probably aware of the way her gaze kept slipping off him as her wine-addled mind tried and failed to focus.

She was going to have to get the name of the brand out of Jane and make Tony get more of that wine.

Knowing him, he'd probably just try to buy the entire winery.

Wait.

Back up.

"Was that supposed to be an insult?" She was mostly sure she didn't actually sound accusing. "Because I survived both a crazy flame-throwing robot sent by a demigod having the temper tantrum of the century _and_ creepy non-Tolkien elves from another universe. My survival skills are _awesome_."

Bucky frowned, and part of her wanted to ask him what was going through his mind, but that would be a can of worms she was definitely not sober enough to handle.

Eventually, he shook his head, "This floor is secure."

Blinking slowly, she nodded once, "Uh yeah, biometrics in the elevator won't allow unauthorized personnel into the residential levels anyway. JARVIS is totally on it. Yay him."

"Thank you for your vote of confidence, Ms. Lewis."

Bucky shifted, his shoulders tensing at the AI's interjection, and then he nodded again, "It's significantly better than your last residence."

"My what?"

"The residence you shared with the woman, the man who hung a hammer on the coat rack, and the other man who didn't wear pants."

Flinching as she remembered Erik—who hopefully was still taking his meds, and she should probably call and check in on him sometime soon—and then her eyes flared wide, "Wait, you were in _London_?"

He stuffed his hands in his pockets, resting his metal shoulder against the wall, "It took me a while to remember where I saw you. My memory isn't very," he trailed off, jaw ticking. "_Accurate_. Sometimes."

"But you were _in London_, like, _months ago_, right when Steve first started looking for you?"

"I did not know what he wanted from me."

"Steve?"

"I will not be taken in and wiped again."

She nodded slowly, and then stopped when her brain caught up with her, "Wait, wiped? Do I want to know?" He seemed like he was about to deflect when she cut him off with a shake of her head. "Never mind. I'm not sober enough for stories of Hydra-themed shenanigans. I don't think I will _ever_ be sober enough. There's no point in telling me."

Silence fell in the hallway, and it was on the verge of diving headfirst into awkward when Bucky tilted his head, his blue eyes boring into her bleary pair, "You require additional electrolytes before you go to sleep."

"Dude, I require _so many_ things before I go to bed," she smacked a hand over her mouth. "Please pretend I didn't say that."

A _look_ crossed his face that probably would have been a smirk on someone who had actually been allowed to express emotions for most of his life, but it fell away quickly, back to that impassive mask he'd been wearing most of the day, "Why don't you start with Gatorade?"

"Sounds like a good plan," she chuckled as she moved around him. "Thanks."

As she made her way to the door of her suite, she slapped her hand against the panel next to the door, waiting for it to read the lines on her palm before it beeped and let her in.

Sparing a final glance over her shoulder, Bucky was still watching her, another strange frown on his face, "Those sandwiches were nutritionally adequate and," she watched as his jaw worked as he fought for his next words. "Tasted good. They were good."

She dipped her head, "I've got an entire list of combinations I've been meaning to try out, if you're interested."

Apparently, it was Get Drunk And Make Friends With Your New Assassin Neighbor Day.

Except he probably had about a million better things to do, like dismantling the remains of the organization that kept him captive for so long and recovering from everything that happened when he was in custody of said organization and the whole metal arm issue, and a whole host of other things that she was _still_ not sober enough to think about.

"Maybe."

Well then.

Okay.


	3. Chapter 3

PSA: All the Russian comes courtesy of Google Translate. Bucky also very helpfully translates for himself.

* * *

It all went to shit over breakfast on a rare morning where they didn't eat in the common kitchen because Darcy was pretty sure she was catching a cold and didn't want to spread it to everyone's least-favorite hypochondriac—Tony, she was talking about Tony—when Charlotte asked the innocent question that Darcy had seriously been dreading for _months_:

"When is Mommy coming back to take me to school?"

And Darcy's fumbling attempt to explain everything ended with Charlotte running from the suite, tears streaming down her small, puffy face as she dashed through the open elevator doors.

Curling up in a corner, she wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her head against her bony knees.

Where was her mommy?

Why did she go?

Why didn't she want to be with her and Darcy?

What did she do wrong?

What did she _do_?

WhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhy?

* * *

And back inside the apartment, Darcy let her head fall heavily on the surface of the kitchen table, "_Son of a bitch_."

Bucky was pacing back and forth in the living room of the apartment he shared with Steve, trying to silence the buzzing in his ears when the slam of a door pierced through the din in his mind.

"Computer?" He snapped as he made his way to the door, a knife slipping into his palm.

Mostly for his own comfort, because it was _safe_ here.

It. _Was_. Safe.

"It seems that the young Ms. Lewis is having a fraught moment."

Right. The Lewis'.

Other than the moment he shared with Darcy about those sandwiches, Bucky hadn't seen much of his new neighbor or her sister after he and Steve made it back from Yugoslavia the week before.

He'd just been so busy with Howard's slightly aggravating son—within seconds of meeting Tony, he understood why Steve had that angry look on his face all the time—as they worked on ways to upgrade his arm without compromising the structure that kept it fused to his torso.

And to take some of the well, _Hydra_, out of it.

Part of him wished he could have more insight into what Stark was doing—he had so much _more_ available to him than his father did, purely due to the fact that Howard helped pioneer some of the most significant developments in technology in history—but when he was down in the lab, all he could hear were the echoes of his screams as he was wiped, and drugged, and beaten, and frozen, over and over and over and over and over again.

Edging into the hall, he glanced around for Darcy, but the space was empty, the door to her apartment closed.

"Computer, where's the kid?"

The elevator pinged, and Bucky looked over, found a small ball of miserable sniffling human curled up in the back left corner.

He looked around the hall again, waiting for Darcy's inevitable appearance, but it didn't seem to be coming any time soon, so he huffed a sigh and made his way over to the elevator, stopping just inside the doors and waiting patiently for Charlotte to notice.

Eventually, she did, and she sniffed and wiped her eyes with one small hand, "Hi."

"Are you operating," for the moment, the incessant buzzing of the muffled screams in his ears lowered into a quiet murmur, and his shoulders dropped a fraction. "Are you all right?"

She sniffled again and rocked a little from side to side, "My mommy does not want me," blinking, she tilted her head back and narrowed her eyes up at him. "What is your name?"

"I am," The Asset. You have no other name. Gift to mankind. You need no other name. Gift. To. Mankind. You are The Asset. "I am not sure."

Rubbing his temple, he sat down and leaned heavily against the panel under the scanning plate, mirroring Charlotte as he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around his legs, "I do not know."

"You don't?"

He shrugged, pressing a hand harder to his temple as the screeching started to blast him in wave after wave after wave, "Steve calls me Bucky," he finally managed. "So you may call me that."

"But is that your _name_?"

"Went by it once," not that he really remembered. "It was a long time ago."

Small lines appeared between Charlotte's brows, "I don't get it."

"It's kind of complicated."

Charlotte gnawed on her lower lip as she curled her arms tighter around her legs, "I don't know why she doesn't want me anymore," she muttered. "Did I do something wrong?"

He really did not know what to say to that.

He also did not know why Charlotte was staying with Darcy, but this helped put a few of the pieces together, "Sometimes people are not capable of caring for others. Even their family."

"Capable?"

"Not," he broke off, his jaw working. "Not able to. It happens sometimes, but it's not your fault."

Prep him. You are a gift to mankind. The mission. He has been out of cryo freeze for too long. The mission. You are my mission.

Bucky drew a sharp breath through his nose as the screeching grew louder, but Charlotte didn't notice his rising discomfort.

"I want my mommy," she muttered into her knees. "I want to go _home_."

He pressed a hand to the base of his skull, dug his fingernails into his skin hard enough that he was probably going to bruise, "Sometimes those things are out of your control," he had _no _idea if he was helping and _where_ was Darcy? "I can not go home either."

Blinking, she tilted her head, "Why not?"

"Some jackass land developer turned it into a boutique hotel."

Despite her upset and the tears streaking down her cheeks, Charlotte giggled, and Bucky's shoulders dropped a little bit more when the sound seeped into his mind, dimming some of the screeching, "_You_ said a bad word."

"So I did."

"Darcy yells at Tony when he says bad words in front of me."

"Yeah?" She nodded eagerly, and he pushed down the urge to smirk and the nerves that followed, because it was so startling when he was hit by the realization that he didn't remember _how_. "Think she's going to yell at me?"

"No offense, but with your current mental state, I think I'd rather not."

Bucky tensed, his hand going for the knife he stuffed in his boot when he first sat down, the noises in his mind ceasing completely as he shifted toward the corner of the car, his head snapping up at Darcy.

Standing in front of the open doors, a sheepish smile crossed her face when the overhead lights reflected off the metal blade, "I startled you. That's mean. Sorry Bucky."

Slowly, he took a deep breath and let the knife go, stretched his legs out in front of him, "No. You didn't."

Darcy arched a brow and snorted, "I did, but I won't tell Steve," she glanced back at Charlotte. "Kid, can we please talk?"

"I dunno," she mumbled as she slowly dropped her arms.

"Come on kid, we've got to," she put her hand out. "Besides, I'm sure your new friend would like to brood in peace."

Bucky snorted, "I don't _brood_."

Charlotte stood and gasped Darcy's hand, "Sure you don't," Darcy drawled. "No one's judging you here."

Standing as well, he followed them back into the hall, "Stark does."

Darcy glanced at him over her shoulder, "_That's_ because he has some seriously unresolved daddy drama, and you totally knew Howard better than he ever did. I wouldn't worry about it. He just wants to ask you all the stories Steve is too nice to tell, but he doesn't want to overtax your puzzle-brain, so he deflects with judgment and sarcasm."

"Do you worry about _anything_?"

"Is that another jab at my perceived lack of self-preservation?"

Stopping short, he swallowed hard until Darcy turned and he saw the amused smirk on her face, "Just curious."

She passed her free hand over Charlotte's hair, "I worry about plenty."

"I know."

"Then why'd you ask?"

He racked his mind for an answer, couldn't find one, so he settled on, "Because I can."

Darcy tilted her head, regarding him for a moment before she grinned. "Yeah, you _can_," she looked back down at Charlotte. "Let's get a move on, Kid, we've got a lot to go over."

Her eyes widened, "Can we watch _Frozen_ again?"

"Talk first, then movie," she laughed and looked back at Bucky. "Will you come? I'll probably drag the nerds out of the lab too. Remind them that there's such a thing as natural sunlight."

He froze.

While he knew that they were a very inclusive group, spending just as much downtime together as Steve told him he and the Howling Commandos used to, he didn't expect to be welcomed into the fold so quickly.

He settled on, "I don't know."

"Well you definitely should. _Frozen_ is a children's phenomenon no adult should miss."

Bucky stopped in front of the door to his apartment, "I will think about it."

"Great!"

* * *

Here is something Bucky knows:

The residential levels of Stark Tower are _safe_.

Steve told him so, the voice in the walls that controlled the building told him so, and Darcy and Charlotte flit around like they have no cares—and their marked lack of self-preservation really made his brain _itch_—and most importantly, the Soldier hovering in one very large corner of his mind confirmed it to be true.

As he continued making the painstaking withdrawal off the drug cocktail Hydra used for so many years to keep him docile, he ran head first into terrible spans of day after day after day where the screeching was so loud he couldn't sleep, followed by long stretches of hours and even days where he fell so deeply asleep that he woke up with a monitor wrapped around his right wrist so the computer could be sure he was still _alive_.

The first morning he woke to that went by in a blur, but he did remember that the monitor ended up crushed into a mess of metal and wires embedded into the wall on the far side of his room.

He remembered _that _part so vividly, guilt gnawing at the pit of his stomach no matter how hard Steve tried to assure him that it was all right to have reactions like that.

On the long days and nights his fractured mind forced him awake, he paced up and down each and every hallway, crawled through every single air duct, and inspected each nook and cranny of every level he had access to.

Except the labs.

He didn't go there unless he absolutely had to meet with Stark, which warred with the man from the nineteen thirties and forties who was so obsessed with science and technology and the future but _he was not that man anymore_.

And the man he was now was not ready for that.

Not yet.

So he walked and walked and walked until his feet and his legs and his lower back screamed louder than the screeching he heard _all the time_, and then passed out until his fractured memories broke through the bone-deep exhaustion to torture him all over again.

The constant walking was the only thing that helped comfort him, because there were corners and sides and walls in his head that refused to accept that this place was safe unless he saw it for himself.

And not just for him, but for all of them.

They all needed to be protected.

Even though Steve thought it would only make his paranoia worse, he'd asked Tony to give Bucky access to security video of the streets outside the Tower, where he'd seen the routine rotation of men and women—poorly concealed, low-level government agents that would have never survived in SHIELD, let alone in the forces of Hydra that hid within the organization—keeping watch on the building and regularly reporting to a man called Ross.

He didn't want to know whom they were waiting for—he didn't think it was for him, and he was sure he would be highly, _highly_ insulted if they were—but he had to know to keep his new home safe.

But he _did not want to know_.

"Computer," he cleared his throat. "JARVIS."

"Yes, sir?"

A second inquiry from JARVIS yanked him from the roar that filled his ears again, and he forced his hands from the tight fists he curled his fingers into, "Does the name Ross have any bearing on anyone in his building?"

"Just a moment," JARVIS paused, and he continued pacing up and down the length of the—his, it was his, he had _possessions_ now—bedroom until he went on. "General Thaddeus E. 'Thunderbolt' Ross matches your parameters best. He is the man the agents casing the Tower have been reporting to."

"You knew?" His blood began to boil, and he pivoted toward the hall, intent on waking Steve.

JARVIS interjected before he made it to the door, "If you would wait just a moment," Bucky paused and tilted his head, one hand pressed against the wall next to the door, his fingers digging into it. "General Ross is merely waiting for a moment to regain the upper hand and apprehend Doctor Banner. It has no bearing on your presence here."

Doctor Banner.

He wasn't a medical doctor, but Tony insisted that he check him over when he first arrived at the Tower.

There was something about the mild-mannered man that kept him on edge the entire time, and it was only Steve's calming presence at his side that kept him from bolting.

He ran a hand through his long, tangled hair as tension slowly drained from his shoulders, "Why is Ross after Banner?"

"The simplest way of explaining would be to point you to the circumstances that led to Doctor Banner becoming the Hulk," JARVIS' tone was succinct, like he'd told whatever story this was many times before. "Shall I download the files to your tablet for your perusal?"

The object in question was still in its box on his dresser, and his left hand twitched, the joints creaking and servos purring loudly, "No. Yes," sweat beaded at his temples as he swallowed hard, glaring at it. "No. _No_."

"Well if you ever wish to see them, I will allow you access."

He rested his forehead against the door and took a deep breath, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, sir."

He huffed, pushing off the door and opening it.

He needed to walk.

* * *

"You didn't come watch _Frozen_ with us."

Bucky was in the living room on the common level a few nights later, moving from one end of the massive space to the other and back again when he heard the tiny voice, and he spun around, palming his knife as he barked, "Znayet li vasha sestra, chto ty prosnulsya?"

Charlotte stared up at him with wide eyes, and his mind eventually caught up with his mouth as he slowly realized that there was something off about what he just said.

Her brows furrowed, "I don't know what 'znayet li vasha sestra, chto ty prosnulsya' means."

Narrowing his eyes as he stashed the knife back in his pocket, he tilted his head and took a step toward her before he stopped short, "Does your sister know that you're awake?"

"I was just thirsty, but we don't have anything in our kitchen except PopTarts and air right now," she shuffled from one foot to the other, the low lights reflecting off the shiny rainbow butterflies on the front of her nightgown. "What language was that?"

"It's Russian. Sestra means sister," he took a slow step toward the kitchen. "What did you want?"

He waited for her to catch up, listening as she hummed and said, "Milk please?"

Bucky froze, falling heavily into his next step as a wave of memories threatened to overwhelm him and his still-fragile psyche.

Milk. Milk and Pierce and Renata. The man on the bridge. This mission. The milk. The mission. The mission. I knew him. You are my mission. Oh Renata. I wish you knocked. Shut up. Gift to mankind. I knew him. I knew him. I KNOW him. I remember.

He managed to claw back to reality, his chest heaving as Charlotte looked up at him curiously, and he rasped, "Milk?"

Her tiny feet slapped against the floor as she walked, "Yes please. Are you okay?"

"Functioning," another harrowing moment followed when he was faced with an _entire fucking shelf of milk_—seriously, why did they need so much fucking milk—and he grabbed the second carton from the right and kicked the door shut so hard the entire thing rattled. "I'm functioning."

Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Charlotte stood in front of the sink, rocking on her heels as she watched him watch her, and he grabbed a glass from one of the upper cabinets, "How did you do that?"

Charlotte stopped rocking and looked at him like he was speaking a different language again, but he was sure—yes, he was, _he was_—that he had said the words in English that time.

"Do what?"

"The Russian," he poured half a glass before slapping the cap back on the carton. "You mimicked my accent perfectly."

Accepting it with a quiet thanks, Charlotte took a sip before she whispered under her breath, "Znayet li vasha sestra, chto ty prosnulsya?"

He was pretty sure that was weird.

"Most people who don't know other languages wouldn't remember it as well as you do."

"People can't do that?"

He placed the milk back in the refrigerator as quickly as he could and leaned against the door, forcing down the completely irrational feeling that the cartons were going to somehow make their escape and attack him, "It is a very useful skill for a person to have."

Charlotte took another sip, "I like to remember things," she glared and her pale eyes flashed. "I remember you were going to watch _Frozen_ with us. Darcy made Steve sing the songs with her."

He remembered that too.

But he couldn't bring himself to leave his room and join them.

"I had to stay away."

"Why?"

"Because I had to," he watched her drain the rest of the glass and held his hand out for it. "You should go back to sleep."

Charlotte's tiny features twisted into a frown, "But-"

The screeching was getting louder again, "Go back to bed. _Go_."

Eventually, she huffed in exasperation and it would have been funny if he as anyone else in the building, "Fine," she muttered. "_Goodnight._"

"'Night."

When she was gone, the sounds of her feet disappearing into the elevator, he pushed off the refrigerator and dropped the glass in the sink.

Huffing as he tried to steady his shaking hands, he nudged the faucet on and leaned his head down, his left ear next to the steady stream of water, and he listened to it pound against the metal bottom and drown out the screaming in his mind.

* * *

"Where is Bucky?"

Darcy paused, her coffee mug halfway to her lips as she looked across the table to Charlotte, who was sitting on her knees on the chair between Jane and Thor. She was picking at the lukewarm pancakes on her plate and looked at Darcy with innocent curiosity plain on her syrup-sticky face.

"What?"

Taking another bite of pancake, Charlotte didn't realize that everyone at the table—Steve, Bruce, and Pepper too—was watching her with frowns on each of their faces, "Where is Bucky?"

Steve glanced at Darcy, and then cleared his throat, "Why do you ask, Charlotte?"

Her eyes were wide as she blinked them slowly, and then swallowed the bite she was chewing on, "I am _curious_," she rolled her eyes and ripped the other pancake on her plate, smearing her fingers with more butter and syrup. "Because I am four, and four year olds are supposed to ask questions."

"I was right, you _are_ too dang smart for your own good, Kid," Darcy tried to hide her unease as she stuffed a large bite of the ham and cheese omelet Thor made for her in her mouth.

"I'm _normal_."

Darcy snorted, her shoulders dropping and the tension eased out of the kitchen since it seemed the girl had moved on to another subject, "Not living here, you're not."

"But doesn't Bucky have to _eat_?"

So apparently, she _wasn't _done with the topic.

Darcy really should have known better.

So she looked at Steve and shrugged, and he took a long drink from his coffee, "He's sleeping, Charlotte."

Eyes wide, she turned to face Darcy, her hair flipping over her shoulder and the ends would have fallen onto her plate had Jane not acted quickly and swept the mass back over her shoulder, "Why can't _I_ sleep in?" She whined and then pouted hard. "_No fair!_"

Rolling her eyes, Darcy propped her chin on her palm, "Because _you_, little miss, are going to spend the day down at Daycare with all your cute little friends while Jane and I get some actual work done breaking the laws of physics."

"But that's _boring_."

She pouted again, and it was still adorable.

"I _hate_ Daycare. _I _want to break the laws of physics."

Darcy shared an amused look with Jane, who stuffed a fist against her mouth to mask her own laughter, and then looked back at Charlotte, "It's art day, Kid, and trust me, no you don't."

She perked up, "Can I finger paint?"

Darcy pretended to think about it and faked a sigh, "I guess."

"_Yes! _I love Daycare! Daycare's the best!"

Thor's throaty chuckle echoed through the room, "Your exuberance is quite similar to that of your sister's, little Lady Charlie. I am sure we would all prefer to partake in finger painting rather than the work we must do."

Tilting her head, Charlotte shifted onto her knees and looked up at him, "What does _exuberance_ mean?"

He put his hand on her shoulder, "You get excited."

"Oh," she blinked, and then nodded. "Yeah, I do that."

Darcy looked back at Jane, who was watching Thor and Charlotte with a _look_ on her face.

Oh boy, Jane was in _serious_ trouble now.

Well, _more serious_ trouble compared to the last million times Thor swept her off her feet.

Smirking as she filed the look away to tease her when they were in the labs because wedding bells were _so_ in the air no matter what Jane tried to insist, Darcy wiped her mouth with her napkin and stood up, "Finish your breakfast, Kid. I'm going to run downstairs and get your bag."

"'kay!"

As she made her way to the elevator, a hand curled around her arm, and she saw a worried Steve standing behind her, "Yes?" She drew out the word for a breath. "What's up?"

He cocked his head back to the kitchen where they could hear Charlotte chattering at Pepper about her favorite paint colors and why paintbrushes were absolutely unnecessary, "What was that about?"

Darcy shrugged, "Hell if I know. She's four. Four year olds are apparently pretty random. I think I read that in one of those pretentious parenting books Stark bought as a joke to welcome me into the world of _motherhood_."

Apparently that answer wasn't good enough.

"But when has she even spent time with Bucky to ask about him?"

Again, she shrugged, shifting her arm out of his light grasp, "Not since the day she pitched a fit about Mom being the worst person, _ever_," she waved a hand. "I wouldn't make a big deal about it. Sometimes kids remember random things and decide to fixate on them. It's probably nothing."

Sighing, Steve raked a hand through his hair, "I just worry about her. Being here isn't all that-"

"Safe. I _know_. I think about it more than people think I do," she shook her head and took a deep breath before she could get worked up for the umpteenth time. "Look, I have to get her stuff."

Twenty minutes later and Darcy was in the conference room on the level below Tony's personal lab, sitting on a cushioned stool in a corner and dutifully taking notes while Jane stood by the wall of monitors up front as she talked to Bruce and Tony about the newest news on the Bifrost.

The thing was great when it worked, thus proven back in the ye olde when Odin used to take the kids and flit about with the Midgardians, but when it broke, it was almost completely and totally useless.

Tony glanced down and consulted the readings on his tablet, "So riddle me this, Foster," his eyes flicked from one side of the screen to the other. "Thor and his Asgardian buddies used the Bifrost to run amok around the Nine Realms, or they did until Loki went on his temper tantrum round one, correct?"

"Yes."

"But what about the rest of the universe? Say they want to take a day trip out to the Delta Quadrant?"

Darcy snickered at how blatant of a nerd Tony really was, while Jane resisted the urge to roll her eyes, "The machinery they use runs very similarly to the magic that Heimdal employs to power the Bifrost. I haven't had the chance to get my hands on any of that technology since we're so focused on repairing and reinforcing the bridge."

She paused, and Darcy waited for her to go on until Jane cleared her throat, and she looked up to see her waiting pointedly, head cocked to the monitor behind her, "Oh!" Darcy scrambled for the remote on the bench next to her and clicked a sequence that changed images on screen to a collection of photos of galaxies from when they borrowed the Hubble Telescope. "My bad."

It was really hard not to let her mind drift as the trio kept going.

Darcy knew enough to parse that they were trying to find a way to devise some sort of transportation device or even a ship that could allow the Avengers to travel through space, make alliances with other worlds now that they knew there were creatures like the Chitauri out there, and even find an easier way in and out of Asgard, but they were only in the preliminary, theoretical stages.

It was going to take a while.

A _long _while.

They went back and forth, throwing off idea after idea, some that seemed legitimate and some that were straight out of the obscure side of Star Trek and Darcy kept note on each of them, even if she didn't understand half the words they used—that's what JARVIS was for, anyway.

"I really hate to be the one to bring this up," Bruce said, almost an hour later, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But what about the device that Loki had Doctor Selvig build? There has to be a way to apply that technology to what you already know about worm holes and the Bifrost."

"Yes, but it was powered by the Tesseract," Tony groaned as Jane mentioned the shining blue cube of everyone's nightmares, and Darcy couldn't help but let out a quiet noise in agreement. "There's no way that Odin will allow it off Asgard. Not after everything that happened after they lost it the first time."

Jane flinched, and added, "Let alone what Loki did with it."

Waving a hand, Tony leaned back in his chair, "It might be viable one day, but we'll put it on the backburner for now."

Darcy had been around Stark Tower long enough to know what _that_ meant.

Tony was going to start plotting, with or without their help.

She couldn't fight back a grin as she ducked her head toward her tablet and continued making notes.

Just another day in paradise. Even if paradise was a place that was probably going to make her crazy.

* * *

Losing time was not acceptable for The Asset.

It didn't happen when he was under Hydra's control, but if it did, it wouldn't have been acceptable.

Now though, was a bit of a different story.

Bucky raked his flesh hand through his hair, wincing as his fingers caught in a couple day's worth of sleep-mused tangles, and he scowled as his bleary eyes caught the readings on the monitor on his wrist.

The fact that, once again, he slept deeply enough that absolutely no part of him noticed Steve enter his room, put it on him, and then leave again, was more than a little disturbing.

On the plus side, it didn't end up embedded in his bedroom wall like the first three times.

So maybe he was making progress?

Maybe, maybe not.

Shuffling off the elevator and back onto the common level, he followed the orders of his growling stomach and crossed into the kitchen, squinting at the bright lights that reflected off the stainless steel appliances.

"Hi."

He blinked, eyes narrowing on Charlotte where she was perched on a stool, which she pushed over to the toaster on the counter by one of the coffee markers and was waiting for something flat and square to finish cooking.

"Kid," he growled, his voice rough from days of disuse.

She smiled and waved, "Steve said you were sleeping."

It took a second before he realized that meant she had to ask about him in the first place, and something hard stabbed into his chest before he forced out a rough, "Did he now?"

"Couple days ago," she shrugged a shoulder. "You sleep a _lot_."

His stomach growled again, and he crossed over to the pantry, "I required it."

The toaster pinged sharply, and he tried to suppress a startled jerk, the fingers of his metal hand digging into the soft metal of the door, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Charlotte frown as she carefully pulled the glass door open.

"Wait," he snapped as she reached her hand into the toaster, and she dropped it back to her side, "You're going to hurt yourself."

He strode across the room and reached in with his metal hand for the pair of garishly frosted pastries, gently easing them onto the paper plate next to Charlotte's elbow.

"I do know how to use a toaster," she muttered under her breath. "But thank you."

"Pazhalsta."

Charlotte tilted her head up so she could see his face, "Does that mean _you're welcome_?"

"Da."

"How do you say _thank you_?"

He arched a brow, "Spasiba."

As he walked back to the pantry, Charlotte mouthed the two words under her breath before she took a tiny bite of her PopTart, watching Bucky as he took in the immense display of food in front of him, "Can you teach me?"

Bucky stilled and glanced back over her shoulder, "You should eat and go back to sleep malyshka."

She pouted, "You're not the boss of me. I want to learn it. What does malyshka mean?"

A muscle in his jaw ticked, and he swallowed hard, resisting the urge to flee as he grabbed the first thing on the middle shelf, a small packet of cheese and crackers, "You have no idea who I am _little one_."

Charlotte rolled her eyes, "Darcy says you're _Bucky_."

No he wasn't.

He couldn't go back to being that man, the war hero from the museum.

But maybe he could go somewhere in between.

If he wanted to.

Finally, he sighed and tossed his snack onto the table, and it smacked against the stone fruit bowl before settling, "Fine," he yanked a chair back and sat down heavily. "Get some paper and a pen."

"'Kay!"


	4. Chapter 4

It didn't surprise Bucky when he discovered that he wasn't the only one in the Tower who struggled with the urge to move about at all hours, spurred by more than just nightmares.

More often than not, he was alone—though he knew that Tony was pretty much always working in the lab he couldn't bring himself to approach, especially when Pepper was out of town—but other times he would stalk through the halls late at night and run into an equally sleepless Hawkeye.

_Former SHIELD, the good side of it, what that even meant, who had been trudging through some nameless desert when everything in D.C. happened._

He didn't know what kept the bow-toting Avenger, awake, and he didn't ask. Didn't want to know.

Clint offered him the same courtesy, and it helped, more than a little bit, for him to settle into the Tower knowing that he wasn't alone and that there was someone who faced demons like he did.

As helpful as Steve had been for him these last few weeks, Steve didn't know this, couldn't understand it.

One evening during a walk that started early enough that the household was still awake, he strode into the living room, stopping short when he saw Darcy pacing back and forth along the edge of the glass-topped coffee table, muttering under her breath and shooting glares at the narrow white envelope resting on her StarkPad.

He narrowed his eyes at the metal knitting needles she held tight in her right hand, ways to disarm her flashing through the front of his mind while Darcy remained unaware that she was no longer alone.

But the longer he stayed surrounded by these _people_, the manners of protecting himself from potential harm were becoming less and less lethal and he didn't know what that _meant_.

Darcy let out an irritated squeak after he cleared his throat and she rounded on him, "Oh, hi Bucky," she followed his gaze to the needles in her hand and muttered a curse before she took a step toward the couch and tossed them on top of the bag of wool lying on one side. "Sorry about that. What's up?"

His mind continued to race with ways to stop her if she tried to get back to those needles, and he shook his head to force the thoughts back into the low, buzzy thrum, "I am functioning within acceptable parameters," he cleared his throat. "Are you all right?"

She blinked, probably at his choice of words, before she narrowed her pale eyes back down to the source of her ire for the moment, that envelope on the coffee table, "So I got a thing in the mail for Charlie."

"And it is a bad thing?"

"When it's the money my mother somehow got from selling the house we grew up in?" She snapped as she swiped the half-full bottle of beer off the table and took a long drink. "Well I'd say yes. What the fuck am I supposed to do with it? I mean, where the hell is _she_ going to live? What is she _doing_?"

He just shrugged as she started pacing again, "And there isn't any kind of return address or forwarding address so I can send it back and tell Mom where to shove it. I even called the company she used to sell the house and they've got _nothing_. Oh my god, what is _wrong_ with her?"

Snorting, Bucky crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the side of the massive entertainment center, "You know you get pretty vicious when you're pissed?"

"It's a skill. At least I don't have my taser," she smirked as she downed the rest of the bottle and then flopped onto the recliner, her legs trailing in the air before she let them drop heavily to the floor.

With a shake of his head, he pushed off the wall and made his way into the kitchen, rifling through the small refrigerator dedicated solely to beer—because they _had_ that, of course they did—grabbing a bottle that he vaguely remembered as one that tasted decent, "You want another one?" He called as he looked around for a bottle that matched the one Darcy was drinking.

She didn't say anything, and he glanced up, bracing his hand against the top of the door as he saw her favor him with a strange look, "What?" He let out a raspy laugh. "I've been good at keeping the English and the Russian separate, I know that."

"But you can't even get drunk."

He flinched a little and looked up at the ceiling for a second, "Just because I can't doesn't mean I don't still _like_ it."

.Youaremymission.

_Shut up!_

"Sorry," she winced as she looked down at the empty bottle in her hand and picked at the peeling label. "That was really rude. Blame my mother. She's always brought out the worst in me."

Again, he shrugged, kicking the refrigerator closed with his foot and bringing her the fresh bottle, "I'll leave you alone, if you want."

Accepting it, she shook her head, "No, sorry, sorry," she twisted the cap off, rolling it between her fingers. "I've just been on edge about Charlie starting school next week. My greatest nightmare is becoming one of those terrible Stepford PTA moms, and Constance, as great is it's going to be for her, is like, the epitome of that."

"All the things you've seen and _that's_ your greatest nightmare?"

"I can't control my subconscious."

He saluted her with his bottle, "You're strange."

"And yet, I'm by far the most normal person in residence. Go figure, right?"

Gazing out the window at the glittering city, he listened as her feet scraped against the floor when she shifted so she could place the empty bottle on the table, and her was pretty sure she was still glaring at the envelope, "Darcy, can I ask you something?"

She blinked as she regarded him, "Of course. Fire away."

"You're normal."

There was a beat and he could feel the heat of her eyes on the side of his face as he took a long drink, fought a little to gather his thoughts as the buzzing started up again.

"Is there a question there? Or are you fishing to see if I belong upstate with those kids at Xavier's? The answer is no, by the way, though the ability to teleport would be _super_ convenient with everything I've got going on these days."

He finally looked at her, "It's not that. You're the most normal person here. Why is that?"

"I'm not sure I follow."

Biting his lip, he considered his words, "Why do you risk it?"

"That would be my massive, rent-free apartment in one of the country's cultural capitals."

There was a _look_ on his face, and she was pretty sure that any other person—she didn't _want_ to say normal, but that's what it would have been—would have been rolling their eyes at her.

Shaking her head, she shifted so she sat cross-legged, leaning forward so she could rest her elbows on the arm of the chair, facing him, "I may not have super powers, or an I.Q. of a gazillion and five, but when I was in New Mexico interning with Jane and Erik, I was in the right place at the right time, because when Thor was kicked out of Asgard for being a grade-A douche, I was thrown headfirst into a whole new world, and it was so much shinier than doing whatever it was I thought I wanted."

She took another drink and went on, "I finished my poli-sci degree while I was in London, because I thought it was something I needed to do for SHIELD, and I thought I could do some good with them."

He winced.

"You know what happened next," she tossed him an easy grin and a wink. "But I didn't have time to feel sorry for myself and worry about what I was going to do next, because Stark came along and scooped us all up. I _know_ I can do some good here."

She toyed with the bottle, rolling it between her fingers, "I don't do much for the team, especially now that Charlie's here, but I know that keeping Jane from passing out when she refuses to eat because she's so busy, and making sure Tony doesn't get too obsessive with the new suits he's working on, and helping keep Bruce calm, and taking some of the load off Pepper and the business side is important. So I'll keep doing it. I can't see myself anywhere else."

Bucky nodded when she finally trailed off, "That's, that's admirable. Most people wouldn't."

She smirked, "You did too," she faltered at the blank look on his face. "I mean, Bucky from back in the day did. I read about you, when I was in school. You could have gone back to the States after Steve rescued you, hell, you were _highly encouraged_ to go back home, take your honorable discharge, but you stayed, formed the Commandos."

"Not like he was going to leave Steve."

She didn't skip a beat with the way he referred to himself, and he was thankful for that.

The fact that he did it in the first place spoke volumes about the progress he'd made since he and Steve got to the Tower.

Baby steps were better than nothing.

"And it's not like I'm going to leave Jane behind any time soon, so there's that."

Darcy knocked back the rest of her beer, "So," she drawled, tilting her head back to the table. "You up for helping distract me from the massive elephant in the envelope?"

He arched a brow, "What are you thinking?"

"Certainly not what _you're_ thinking," she laughed airily as his eyes went comically wide, and she shook her head. "You ever had a grilled cheese with brie, chocolate, and basil?"

"You serious?"

She snorted and pushed off the recliner, curling two fingers around the bottle on the table while the other three still held onto the half-full one pressed against her palm, "I've been drinking, of course I am," she patted his shoulder. "Come on. I need you to use your mad knife skills."

"Most people would prefer I stay _away_ from the knives," he muttered as he followed her.

"Chocolate and brie grilled cheese," she tossed over her shoulder. "It'll be worth it, I promise."

* * *

Following a grueling sparring session with Thor, Steve was rubbing a dry towel over his head as he padded barefoot off the elevator and toward the kitchen, but when he turned a corner he nearly walked right into Clint's back.

"Oh sorry," he frowned as he looked down at the archer, Clint staring off with a curious look on his face. "What's wrong?"

Snapping out of his reverie, Clint scratched the back of his head while nodding toward the opposite side of the room, half of the kitchen in view, and Steve could see Bucky leaning against the pantry doors while Darcy stood at the stove, "What are they doing?"

He made to step around Clint, but he put a hand on his shoulder and kept him from stepping into the common room, "Don't," Clint muttered. "They've been in there for twenty minutes. He's helping her cook."

Steve blinked, "That's," he broke off and shook his head. "That's different."

Clint just shrugged as Darcy's voice carried through the common room over the hiss of the food on the stove, "So I forgot to ask," there was a clattering of cutlery as a drawer was pushed shut. "But are you all right? You looked kind of twitchy when you first came in."

For a minute, Bucky was silent, and Steve was absolutely sure he wasn't going to answer before he heard, "I just needed to walk."

"Well that's cool," she said, and Steve could imagine the look on her face, one that said she didn't believe him for a second.

She used that one a lot lately.

"Well anyhoo," she went on. "I'm going to run downstairs and make sure my geniuses don't pass out on things that may or may not explode. Will you pop whatever sandwiches you don't eat into the toaster and ask JARVIS to tell Steve and Clint there's here before you go back to trekking?

"I can do that."

"I know you _can_, but will you?" They could hear the laughter in her voice. "Thanks again for distracting me."

There was a quiet clatter and the clang of a skillet falling into the metal sink, "Darcy?"

"Yeah?"

"The sandwiches," Bucky paused. "They weren't very nutritious."

She laughed, "Not really the point."

"Well they were good."

"And that _was_ the point. All hail comfort food. I'll catch you later Bucky."

They heard the slap of her feet against the floor echo fainter and fainter as she made her way toward the auxiliary elevator bay on the far side of the building.

Steve shared a look with Clint, and both shrugged as they moved into the living room.

Bucky was standing in the doorway to the kitchen watching them.

"Buck-"

He cut Steve off with a sharp tilt of his head back over his shoulder, "Darcy left you two something to eat."

Steve didn't know what to say, but Clint recovered quicker, "Thanks man," he clapped Steve on the shoulder as Bucky stepped out of the way so he could make it into the kitchen.

"I didn't know you were interested in cooking," Steve said after a minute.

Bucky shrugged, "Darcy is. She's good at it," he turned and headed toward the way Steve came in. "You should eat before they get cold. They won't taste as good."

Without another word, he left Steve standing in the middle of the room, staring off and trying to make sense of what just happened until Clint poked his head out of the kitchen, half a sandwich in a hand wrapped in a dingy ace wrap, "You have to try this, man. How did we not know Darcy could do this back in Puente?" he went on, more to himself as he shuffled away. "Good God, JARVIS, we need to erect a shrine or something."

Shaking his head, Steve spared a final glance back toward the hall before he went into the kitchen.

* * *

"Snack time!" Darcy's voice rang out through the lab as the doors swished open.

Unsurprisingly, she was more or less ignored, with Tony's robots perking up at her arrival more than the humans did.

She walked over to Jane's corner, passing the mess that was her own desk and the discarded equipment and wipe boards that made for an interesting obstacle course that Tony refused to go anywhere near, "Hey Jane, you awake in there?"

It took her a couple of minutes of gentle cajoling to draw the woman away from the readouts on the trio of wall-mounted monitors in front of her, and Jane eventually blinked out of her intense focus, "Darcy," she blinked a couple more times as she looked up. "Where have you been? I needed you to turn in those requisition forms a couple hours ago."

"Already handed them off to Stark's people down in R&amp;D. I was having a huge case of the _ugh_ after the courier gave me something from Ms. Missing In Action and needed a break before I broke something," she shrugged and held up the covered platter in her hands. "Made you and the bros some very tasty sandwiches."

Jane's eyes went wide, "Darcy, that courier came hours ago! Why didn't you tell me something was wrong?"

"You were pretty engrossed in those molecular stabilization readings," she waved a hand to the wall of equipment and monitors. "I didn't want to knock you off your groove."

"_Darcy!_"

"What? I'm okay!" She insisted. "I paced a bit, had a couple beers, and made some food."

With a blink, Jane finally focused on the platter Darcy had placed on her desk, wrinkling her nose at the messy piles of reports and science journals it covered, "That's a _lot_ of food."

"Bucky helped me," she lifted the lid and eased two on the plate before she handed the platter off to Dum-E, and the robot scurried over to the other side of the lab where Bruce and Tony were busy throwing little balls of digital files back and forth at each other. "We made a bunch for everyone."

She handed Jane the plate and arched a brow, "What? Why with the face?"

Jane tilted her head, "Did he volunteer or was he-"

Darcy rolled her eyes and propped her hip against the desk, "No, he was not volun-_told_. Like he's really going to let someone like me order him around. Come _on_. All I did was _ask_ him to slice up some brie, and he did. That's it. Now _eat _before it gets cold, woman."

As Jane nibbled on the corner of her sandwich, she focused her gaze on Darcy, "You _like_ him."

Doing a double take, Darcy spared a glance at the far side of the room, but Tony and Bruce didn't seem to hear.

Because Tony would probably have jetted on over courtesy of the new suit boots he had been wearing all day—because of reasons, and really, Pepper had to stop leaving the country—if he had.

"Left-field much Jane? I've seen the guy like, ten times since he moved in, and he lives twenty feet from my apartment. I had more interactions with those truck drivers on their monthly trips through Puente."

"So?" She shot back, her eyes fluttering as she hummed in approval around another bite of cheese and chocolate. "You know how long it took me to figure out I had feelings for Thor."

"Who literally swept you off your feet with stories of the great beyond. What does any of this have to do with me bringing you a _snack_?" Darcy muttered as she looked down at Jane's desk and started picking up the pens scattered across the surface and collected them into a chipped Culver coffee mug.

"Oh, _I don't know_, the fact you won't look me in the eye, maybe?"

Darcy's eyes snapped to meet Jane's, "_What_? So he's hot. So is like, every single person in this building. Even the janitorial staff is attractive. I think it's a Stark Industries hiring requirement or something."

"_Darcy_."

She threw her hands up, "Come _on_ Jane, it's not like anything is going to happen. He's got enough on his mind."

Finishing half of the first sandwich, Jane wiped her fingers off on a napkin, "Well you shouldn't let it _stop_ you."

"_Jane_."

She shrugged and grabbed another half before she turned back to the monitors, "Well if you're not going to keep me distracted by the best gossip I've heard since you mentioned you were actually sleeping with your intern, you might as well help me with this," she grabbed a thick stack of printouts. "I'm going to give you some numbers and some categories for baselines, and I need you to highlight anything outside of the parameters."

Accepting the pile, she wrinkled her nose and grabbed a couple highlighters, "I _really_ wish you wouldn't mention him."

"Yeah, yeah."

She dropped onto the chair Jane hadn't been sitting in since that morning and waited for her to write out the numbers, taking the bright green Post-It and slapping it onto the top of the pile before she pushed across the room to her own desk.

Kicking her feet up, she propped the papers against her legs, "You know something Jane?" She called before the other woman could fall back into the haze of science. "You're a real stinker, and sometimes I hate you. Really."

Without looking over, Jane scoffed, "You _do_ like him. It's cute, _really_."

"Shut up."

Halfway through the pile, at least two hours later, Darcy realized she left that stupid envelope back in the living room, and it startled her so badly she almost fell off her chair.

Damn it.

* * *

The day and night before Charlotte's first day of Pre-K, Darcy was so busy wrapped up in a project Jane and Bruce were working on that she was _pretty sure_ involved the Bifrost but _might_ have been about adapting a larger arc reactor into a power source for an engine bigger than an Iron Man suit, or both, that she barely had time to pack the little girl into bed before she had to run back down to the labs.

A pang shot through her chest when she took the time to think about just how often she left Charlotte to her own devices or to the supervision of the trio of early-childhood education specialists that SI employed.

It was well after midnight when Darcy finally stumbled into the apartment, kicking her shoes off in the doorway as JARVIS turned the lights up enough that she could see without walking into the furniture scattered throughout the living room.

Draping her bag over the back of the couch, she shuffled into her bedroom and shucked her layered shirts and ratty jeans in favor of sleep pants and a tank top before she flopped onto the bed face-first.

She breathed deep, her mind drifting off.

And then it hit her.

_Tomorrow was Charlotte's first day of school_.

Letting out a defeated groan through her nose, Darcy cursed her mother for the umpteenth time as she pushed off the deliciously warm and rumpled duvet, groping for her glasses where she tossed them on the nightstand and shoving the back across her nose.

As she crossed back into the living room, she had to kick aside one of Charlotte's abandoned dolls before she could make her way to the hallway off the small kitchenette that was rarely ever used.

Pressing her ear to Charlotte's door, she was greeted with silence—which she expected at oh-dark-really-late—and Darcy pressed one hand against it as she slowly twisted the knob with her other hand, easing the door open and letting a tiny shaft of light spill into the room.

Which was empty.

Darcy flicked the door aside and let it bang against the wall, rubbing her aching eyes as the noise broke the silence in the apartment, "J," she groaned. "Where the hell is Charlie?"

"In the kitchen, Ms. Lewis."

She sighed as she pivoted heavily, stumbling against the wall and catching herself on her elbow with a curse, rubbing it as she made her way out of the suite, "A warning or a notice or _something _might have been nice."

There was a pause.

"My apologies, Ms. Lewis."

She slumped against the elevator wall, "Yeah, yeah."

Squinting at the bright lights when she stumbled into the room, Darcy found Charlotte sitting on her knees at the table with markers and paper scattered around her.

That wasn't surprising, since the kid like to draw when she couldn't sleep, and Darcy would come into her room in the morning to the sight of her surrounded by paper and arms covered in ink.

What Darcy didn't expect was to see _Bucky_ _Barnes _in a chair next to Charlotte, a marker in his left hand as he drew a symbol that looked Cyrillic before he slid the piece of paper in front of her.

At the indrawn breath she couldn't hold back, Bucky's head shot up, and color bled away from his already pale face, "Uh, Darcy-"

"What are you two doing?" She asked, her voice a little strangled, but more or less even as she got a water bottle out of the refrigerator. "At," she squinted at the clock on the microwave. "After midnight. On a Sunday."

Charlotte bounced on her knees and picked up another piece of paper so Darcy could see another symbol drawn in Bucky's hand, her shaky repetitions printed in a row below it, "Bucky's teaching me Russian letters."

"She doesn't even know all of her _English_ letters yet."

Bucky, who had tensed so hard the marker in his hand cracked in half, snapped out of it, tossing it away and ignoring how ink splattered all over his metal hand and the table, "Sorry, I'll just go," he muttered, bolting out of his chair and out of the room. "Sorry."

Before she could say a word, he was gone, disappearing into the darkened hallway.

"Darcy?"

Charlotte's voice snapped her out of her reverie, and she put a finger up, narrowing her eyes, "Do _not_ move, Kid. I'll be right back."

"But Darcy-"

She glanced back over her shoulder with narrowed eyes, "Charlotte, you keep that butt glued to that chair. I'll be right back."

Charlotte rolled her eyes as she slumped back, "_Okay_," she said to the empty room, and she looked at the splattered mess on the tabletop before dragging her fingers through it.

* * *

JARVIS pointed Darcy right back where she came from, to the apartment Bucky and Steve shared across the hall from her own.

Like he'd go anywhere else.

She tapped hard on the door until a bleary-eyed captain yanked it open, irritation quickly falling away and replaced by confusion, "Darcy? Is something wrong?"

Shouldering past him, she stepped into the clean, sparse living room—other than the decorations Pepper ordered to furnish all the apartments, there were a couple framed portraits of Peggy and the Howling Commandos torn out of Steve's sketchbook, but not much else—"I need to have words with your heterosexual life-mate."

Steve blinked as he made his way after her, his sleepy mind trying to keep up and failing, "My what?"

Whirling around, she crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head pointedly, "Bucky. Where the hell is Bucky?"

"I think he's in his room," Steve frowned. "Darcy, what's wrong? Did something happen?"

She took a deep breath, her shoulders hunching up to her ears as she made herself calm down, "_Nothing_ is wrong. I just want to talk to him. One person _way out of their depth_ to another. Cool?"

"Darcy, it's after midnight."

"And I've been up twenty-nine hours, what's one more?"

Darcy did her level best not to flinch as Steve stared her down before finally shaking his head and waving a hand toward the hallway, "End of the hall, go ahead."

"_Thank_ you."

The door to Bucky's room was hanging half open, and she could see him pacing back and forth in front of the bed—which looked like it hadn't been slept in, _ever_, though one of the fancy decorative pillows was lying on the hardwood next to it.

Bucky flipped around and cursed under his breath when he saw her, but this time it was in English, "I'm sorry, Darcy."

"For _what_?" She snapped, well aware that Steve was definitely still standing at the far end of the hallway and making no attempt to pretend he wasn't watching the exchange.

Frowning, Bucky stopped pacing and shrugged, "I shouldn't have been alone with her," Darcy glowered at the way he didn't look at her when he spoke. "I should'a told you when she started coming out to see me."

And suddenly, some of the puzzle pieces carved out by Charlotte's off-hand comments and her newfound love for afternoon snoozes began to fit together into something that almost looked like a picture.

And apparently, it was one that featured Bucky.

"How often does she?"

He shrugged, "Few times a week the last couple weeks. I should have told you. I'm sorry."

It took everything she had, but Darcy managed to suppress the urge to roll her eyes so hard they fell out of their sockets.

That, and then smack him upside the head.

"_Stop apologizing!_ Other than not telling me my sister's apparently a little sneak, you haven't done anything wrong!"

Throwing his hands up, he looked at her incredulously, and then started pacing again, "Are you insane, woman?" She did her level best not to flinch at his raspy shout. "Do you have _any_ idea what I am?"

"You're the guy putting up with my insomniac sister and teaching her Russian," she squared her shoulders. "That's all I need to know."

"I'm not _safe_ to be around."

Pinching the bridge of her nose, she drifted to the side and propped her shoulder against the doorframe, "Bucky, I let Charlie use a man that shares his body with a giant green rage monster as her own personal jungle gym. Hanging out with an assassin toting around a case of PTSD that a team of shrinks could write papers about for _decades,_ while being monitored by a semi-autonomous robot in the kitchen of one of the most protected buildings in the tri-state area is, quite frankly, the very least of my _actually extensive_ list of things I am worried about."

Bucky bit down on his lower lip before he finally dropped to sit at the foot of his bed, blue eyes wide and full of something that made Darcy feel a little sick when she met his gaze.

Because she was pretty sure it was _fear._

"You're _insane_."

"I work for Jane Foster and am Tony Stark's unofficial nanny. Of _course_ I'm crazy," she rubbed at the spot below her right eye to dispel the sudden throbbing. "Bucky, I have a question."

"Yes?"

She crossed her arms over her chest, rolling her head toward the ceiling as she carefully pieced her words together into something she hoped wouldn't set him off, or worse, _scare _him off, because Steve would probably kill her if she did, "Do you actually _like_ teaching my sister?"

After a minute, Bucky shrugged, his gaze sliding past her and out the door where Steve was still listening, but he had moved back out to the living room in a pretense of offering privacy.

Like she didn't know that his super powers included super hearing.

But save one shrug, Bucky didn't say anything else, and Darcy had to tamp down on the frustration that was building back up in her chest.

"No, no, I need an actual answer to this one," she tried again. "Is it something you're doing because you _like_ it, or because you feel obligated to fill a four-year-olds' time so you can atone for sins you didn't _willingly_ commit?"

Bucky was quiet, gaze focused inward as he chewed on his lower lip, and Darcy had to try _really_ hard not to let it distract her.

This was _all Jane's fault_.

He finally looked back up, "It's," he trailed off as he tried to think of the right word, mouthed a couple before he settled on. "It is nice."

"Good," she chirped. "Then I don't see a problem with you keeping it up. Though, maybe you could try to keep it to the daylight hours. Charlie _is_ only four, and she's got school tomorrow. Also, you're not the one who has to deal with her when she's cranky and overtired."

Bucky deflated, his wide eyes taking her in as if he hadn't seen her before.

Which, admittedly, he did pretty often around her.

"Really?"

"Dude, why not? Whacky parenting magazines say that learning a second language is important for child development, and you're a hell of a lot cheaper than any fancy tutor I could ever dig up. Or really, ask Pepper to dig up, because _how_ is this actually my life?"

Laughing hollowly, he rubbed a hand over his forehead, "You really are crazy."

"Come on," she held her hand out. "I think you were in the middle of something before I barged in."

"Might've been."

He hesitated long enough that Darcy thought about dropping her hand, but then he stood and curled his around hers, almost startling at the warmth of her skin.

Shaking it off as he let her lead him through the apartment, passing Steve, who watched them curiously, his eyes narrowed at their joined hands, "You two work everything out?"

Darcy tossed a grin over her shoulder and kept pushing onward, "Like you didn't hear every word we said. Have a good night, Cap! Thanks for letting me barge in."

They stepped through the hall and into the elevator, and Bucky wasn't sure what dashed through his chest when Darcy dropped his hand, but he knew he didn't like the feeling, like something else was _missing._

Something he wanted back, almost more than the memories of his old life.

Darcy didn't seem to notice the turmoil rushing through his mind as she padded off the elevator a step ahead of him, and he only just realized she was barefoot, but he wasn't sure why it mattered so much.

When she realized he was hesitating, Darcy pivoted back toward him and tugged on his arm, "Come on Bucky," she got him to take a step forward before he paused again. "This is your _home_. You don't have to hide here."

He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat, "Are you _sure_, Darcy?"

"_Yes_."


	5. Chapter 5

With one hand curled around a mug of shockingly good coffee—in a _real_ cup and not a cheap disposable—Darcy stood in a corner of Charlotte's massive pre-kindergarten classroom, the _Kindergarten Development Center Room A_, at the Constance Billard School for Girls, warily watching the parents on the other side of the room.

Some were wishing their children a wonderful first day, fat tears running down many a mother's face—but not smearing their waterproof mascara, _of course_—while others tried to contain the odd temper tantrum, favoring their fellow parent with mutual exasperated looks.

And a few others were, oddly enough, completely absorbed by whatever was on the tablets and cell phones they clutched in their manicured hands.

They were all so _impeccably _dressed, and Darcy forced down the urge to shift in her well worn Docs, jeans, and t-shirt.

Because even if Charlotte was the only child attending the school on scholarship, neither of them were _any_ lesser than any of the families with their billions and their _legacies_ to the school.

And maybe if she kept telling herself that, she'd eventually believe it.

The building even, was just as much a sight to behold as the families of the children in Charlotte's class.

Not far from One Avengers Plaza, it was historic, brick, beautiful, and most importantly, surrounded by a tall, wrought iron fence with security staff stationed at each of the entrances.

Darcy watched the herd of thirteen preschoolers as they muttered through awkward greetings before, as if a switch flipped, they darted around the room to play, and she smiled when Charlotte made a beeline to the table covered by cups of markers and piles of colorful construction paper.

One of the parents, a tall, leggy woman with long blonde hair weaved into an intricate bun, sidled up next to her with a smile and a shrug of her shoulder, "So which one is yours?"

Blinking out of her reverie, she looked up to meet the woman's blue gaze, "Oh no, I'm not a parent," she cocked her head toward the far corner of the room. "That's my little sister, Charlotte."

"So _she's_ the recipient of the endowment from Stark Industries," she mused before blinking, and then she let out a sheepish giggle that made her look about ten years younger. "I didn't mean for that to come out that way."

Darcy shifted and took a long sip of coffee to mask her discomfort, "Well yeah, she is."

"I'm sorry for sounding nosy, I'm on the parents board, and someone mentioned it at our last meeting," she put a hand out, the pale blue of her nail polish glittering in the overheard lights. "Serena Baizen."

"Darcy Lewis," Serena had a loose grip, something Darcy hadn't encountered too often after the last few years of strong handshakes and stronger warriors. "It's nice to meet you."

Serena glanced back to the corner where Charlotte was still drawling, now accompanied by a little girl whose long brown hair was weaved into a French braid, "Looks like she's made friends with my Margo."

"Oh, well what do you know?"

"Don't worry," Serena must have noticed the trepidation playing on her face and in her voice. "Mo will show your sister the ropes and they'll be running the school in no time."

She barked a quiet laugh, "I'm just a little worried she might have some trouble in that department. Charlie isn't really familiar with," she made a sweeping gesture at the massive room. "All of this."

Serena patted her shoulder, "I wouldn't worry. Kids aren't really focused on all that at their age. And your sister is very tall. I was like that when I started school, and it does give you some advantages."

"I'll take your word for it," Darcy watched the girls as they played before she looked back up at Serena. "Charlie should really be in kindergarten, but I didn't feel like throwing her right in the fire of real school. Figured she should have at least one year of fun before she's sucked into the next thirteen plus."

"She hasn't gone through Pre-K yet?"

Darcy sighed, the gaping hole that was her mother's lack of presence still nagging at her, "It's a long story."

"I didn't mean to pry," Serena said as the tall brunette, one of the women who was teaching the class began herding the children back together.

"Don't worry about it."

Darcy and Serena made their way toward the door, shuffling through the bottleneck the other parents were inadvertently causing as they made their last goodbyes to their children.

And good lord, they were barely going to be there _four and a half hours_.

Darcy tried to tamp down on the judgment threatening to cloud her thoughts, because really, how was she supposed to know how these _real_ parents were feeling right now?

"You want to go get another coffee?" Serena offered, her heeled sandals clicking as she walked. "I can tell you a little more about the school. I went here when I was a little girl."

Fishing her phone out of her back pocket, she glanced down and winced at what time it was, "Thanks, but I have to get back to work," she'd already left her scientists alone too long as it was, since they were still working on the project that kept her occupied for most of the last two days. "Maybe another time?"

"Absolutely," they were outside, and Darcy heard a distant voice call Serena's name, and the she turned toward it. "I'll see you around."

Serena waved over her shoulder, "Bye!"

* * *

Jane was at her desk by the time Darcy got back to the lab, going over paperwork with no less than four pens tucked into the sloppy bun at the nape of her neck, and she looked up with bleary eyes at the arrival, "So how was it? Did Charlotte go in all right?"

"I think I feel like a parent," she muttered as she dropped the strap of her bag on U's arm and the robot glided over to place it on her desk.

Looking up, Jane made a face, "And what does that feel like?"

"Well, I kind of want to throw up."

* * *

[212-555-2329]: _Darcy, hi, it's Serena Baizen. Hope you don't mind, but I grabbed your number from the school registry. I was wondering if you were coming to the parent-teacher reception tomorrow at the Empire? Would be a great chance for you to meet some of the other parents in our class._

Darcy arched a brow at the long message on her phone—with the least amount of chat-speak she'd seen in years, seriously, even Tony abbreviated the shit out of the texts he didn't just dictate to JARVIS—and she stopped in the middle of the hallway outside her apartment as she tapped out, '_I'm not sure it's my scene_.'

[212-555-2329]: _Don't be silly!_

Before she had the chance to think of something to say to _that_, the chat-bubble popped back up.

[212-555-2329]: _I remember I saw you at the rededication of Grand Central this summer. You will fit in just fine. :)_

Frowning at the message, she tried to think back to that warm summer night, not long after Charlotte first moved in—so she'd been ridiculously exhausted as it was—but the whole night was just a blur.

She spent most of it trying to keep Tony in line and Jane from disappearing with Thor into a convenient broom closet—her dress _had_ been killer, _thank you_ Pepper—and she had to run back and forth over the restored floors in borrowed shoes she had been sure she was going to break an ankle in.

For all she knew, Serena _had_ been there, but she'd been too focused on not embarrassing herself to notice.

But considering her face wasn't splashed across the tabloids and there were no videos of her crashing into buffet tables going viral on YouTube, at the very least she'd been successful.

Looking back down at the message, she finally sighed and typed, '_Okay yeah, sure. I'll see you there_."

[212-555-2329]: _Great!_

* * *

And on the subject of borrowed shoes.

"Oh my god Pepper, I need your help," Darcy whined as she breezed into the living room the next night.

Because Thor really was one of the best people ever, he offered to make Charlotte dinner and host her overnight so Darcy could freak out about going to the Constance reception in peace.

Pepper looked up from her perch on a pillow next to the coffee table, her feet bare and one of Tony's old concert t-shirts hanging off her frame as she picked at a slice of pizza, "What is it?"

Darcy dropped on the couch between Tony and Bruce, groaning as she grabbed a slice from the box and stuffed half of it in her mouth, "What in the world am I supposed to wear to a _cocktail reception_ with the parents and teachers from Constance?" She swallowed hard. "Ugh, why is this even a thing?"

"Where's the party?" Pepper shifted around so she could look up at Darcy, the men on either side of her sharing a look as they scooted as close to the ends of the couch as they could.

Rolling her eyes at their antics, Darcy shrugged, "Empire Hotel. I Googled it, and apparently Serena, one of the mothers in Charlie's class, her step-brother bought it a couple years ago."

"Chuck Bass," Pepper offered, and Darcy shrugged again. "I've run into him a few times. Bass Industries has become an extremely philanthropic company ever since he regained the title of CEO after his father died," she wrinkled her nose. "The _second_ time."

"The what now?"

"Bart Bass, Chuck's father, faked his death," Pepper ignored Tony's derisive snort at the man's name and stood up, holding a hand out. "Come on. I'll tell you about it while we raid your closet."

"Oh let's be real, Pepper, I don't have _anything_ appropriate for this!" She suppressed a squeak as Pepper grabbed her arm in a surprisingly strong grip and heaved her off the couch.

She laughed, "We'll make it work. Plus, I can't tell you what shoes I have for you until we know what _outfit_."

Darcy's eyes were wide, "Shoes?"

"Of course!"

She glanced back to the couch, "Tony, I love her."

"Hey! My girlfriend! Don't even think about it."

Sharing an amused look with Pepper, she winked, "Too late."

* * *

Pepper Potts was an absolute genius, and Darcy wasn't sure why she didn't just take over the world already.

"When I was just starting out down in the secretarial pool, I had to figure out very quickly how to dress like I made more money than I did," she said as she picked through Darcy's closet, glanced one hanging dress before shoving it aside. "Once I corrected Tony's math and got promoted, I was encouraged to charge a few things to the business until I could get by own my own salary. "

Eventually, they settled on a short-sleeve black dresses that Darcy didn't actually _remember_ owning—it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that someone smuggled it in her closet when she moved in, _cough Pepper, cough_—and Pepper sent her off to get ready while she ran back to the penthouse for accessories.

With a final check of her makeup, Darcy smoothed out her dress, the hem of it swinging against her knees, then stuffed her phone into the clutch Pepper lent her and slipped into the hallway just as Bucky was coming off the elevator, "Hey there stranger."

He blinked, almost like he was surprised to see her, "Hi," his hands were clenched around the towel draped around his neck, his lightweight long-sleeved shirt soaked with sweat from his workout. "You uh, you look nice."

"You're too kind," she still felt more than a little ridiculous that she was going to a _school function_ like some _parent_. "Thank Thor for Pepper's shoe closet and her carefully cultivated collection of Louboutins."

"Louboutins?"

"Shoes," she clarified. "Very pretty shoes with very pretty red soles that cost like, more than the rent of my first apartment _and then some_, which circles right back to why Pepper is and will always be my hero."

Opening his mouth, he was about to ask Darcy, _again_, if she was crazy, but reconsidered it, "You're talking about _shoes_?"

She nodded brightly as she looked down at the shiny black pumps with delicate straps that crossed over the top of her feet, and she carefully rocked her right ankle so Bucky could see the bright red leather on the bottom, "They're basically the equivalent to, I don't know, your favorite brand of sniper rifle, or something."

Bucky seriously doubted they were on par with his Dragunov.

"I think I'll just take your word for it."

She smirked as she took a couple steps backward toward the elevator, "That's probably your best bet," her phone chirped, and her eyes were wide as she glanced down at it. "Gotta go. Pepper is letting me borrow Happy for the night. I mean really, is she the best ever or what?"

"Yes," he agreed, for lack of a better answer, because Pepper was very intimidating. There was something about her hair. "Where are you going?"

"School function, because apparently that's part of my life now," she wrinkled her nose. "The things I do for the kid."

Bucky tilted his head, "Alone?"

"Well, Happy will be there. It's not like this is a _thing_," she grinned. "Don't worry, it's all good."

With a wink, she slipped away, and Bucky half waved as the doors slid shut.

What she missed was how Bucky remained in the hallway long after she made the descent to the underground parking garage where Stark's long-time sort-of driver was waiting next to an idling fleet vehicle.

"You all right Buck?"

Bucky almost jumped when he realized Steve had poked his head out of their apartment, and he faced him, "Operating," he broke off and shook his head. "I am fine."

Concern was plain on his face as Steve took a tentative step into the hall, and Bucky had to tamp down on the annoyance clawing at the back of his mind, "I _am fine_," he insisted. "But hungry."

"Okay, okay," he glanced to the door opposite theirs. "Maybe Darcy-"

"She's gone out."

"Oh," Steve's brows furrowed. "Chinese takeout?"

Bucky considered it for a moment before he shrugged, "Don't forget the egg rolls," he muttered as he moved past Steve, shoulders bumping against one another's, and into the apartment.

The echo of the bathroom door clicking shut bounced off the walls and into the rest of the apartment, and Steve spared another look at Darcy and Charlotte's door before he made his way back inside in search of his phone.

As he rattled off his order to the owner of a tiny shop a few blocks from the Tower—one that specialized and highly appreciated their massive orders—he faltered with the realization that Bucky actually expressed a desire for something for the first time since he moved in.

Maybe he was making more progress than he thought?

* * *

It was like a scene out of a modern-day _Great Gatsby_, and the mantra of '_what the hell am I doing_' ran through Darcy's mind over and over and over as she made her way into the reception.

All around the ballroom, members of the Constance Billard staff mingled with the parents in attendance, white-shirted waiters and waitresses weighed down by drinks and hors d'oeuvres and canapés, and weren't school functions supposed to be stale baked goods, bad coffee, disgusting punch, and even worse music?

Before she could allow herself to sneak away, find Happy, and return to the relative comfort zone of the Tower, she grabbed a glass of _champagne_—no shit, really?—off a passing tray.

Over the rim of the glass, she scanned the room and found no one she knew, or hell, even wanted to get to know.

"Darcy! You made it!"

Well, never mind that then.

Ever the vision in a lightweight dress in bright yellow, the crowd parted for Serena as she made her way over, leaning in to kiss Darcy's cheek, "It's so great to see you. I love your dress!"

"Thanks," she glanced around. "So this is one heck of a shindig. This what I can expect as a _Constance Parent_?"

Serena bounced on her heels as she winked, "Oh no! It gets better."

Something gnawed at her insides, and it felt remarkably similar to how she felt when she was running from those crazy elf creatures in London.

Oh dear lord.

She managed to shake it off as Serena linked her free arm through hers and led her through the room, throwing out names of parents and teachers she recognized as they passed by, introducing Darcy to a few, but for the live of her, she couldn't remember much from any one of the quick interactions.

The finally made it to the far side and had broken through the sea of people when something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she saw two men standing a few feet away, talking over their drinks.

The brunette facing her, she recognized from a picture Pepper showed her earlier that evening of Chuck Bass, now a little older, but still wearing a bright patterned bow tie with his striped suit.

But it was the man Chuck was speaking to that made her narrow her eyes at them.

She could only see the side of his face, but there was something about it that was triggering _hard_ on the edge of her awareness.

And then his head finally moved, and the realization _why_ slapped her in the face.

"Oh holy shit."

Thankfully, she managed to restrain her voice to a whisper, and Serena missed it as she waved a hand at the two men as they moved toward a staircase a few feet away, "That's my stepbrother Chuck, Blair's husband, I've told you about Blair, right? She's around here somewhere, I'll introduce you," she wrinkled her nose delicately. "And my husband Carter. They're probably going to talk about their newest joint acquisition, but I'll introduce you to them as soon as they come back down."

Darcy shook herself out of her shock and downed the rest of her drink, handing it off to a passing waitress, "Sounds great," she coughed, mentally giving herself a pat on the back for being able to _speak_. "If you'd excuse me a minute, I have to make a quick call."

"Of course. Come find me later. Blair is _dying_ to get your friend Pepper into like, half of the new collection she's designing for next summer. It's _all_ she can talk about since I mentioned that Charlotte was one of Mo's classmates."

She let out a short laugh, "I'll see what I can do about that," she said before making her way to the nearby balcony, one hand dipping into her clutch for her phone, and she flicked through her recent calls for Steve's number.

"_Party's that bad?_"

She was about to rub her fingers over her eyes before she remembered the layers of eyeliner, shadow, and mascara, and let her hand drop uselessly back to her side, "I need you to come to the Empire. Oh, and Clint too, if he's around. I think there might be a thing. A small one."

"_A thing_?" The humor vanished from his voice, and Steve was pretty much replaced by Captain Rogers. "_Darcy, are you in danger?_"

"No, no, no, I don't think so," she was quick to assure, even though she wasn't _entirely_ sure that everything was completely okay. "But there's a guy here, one of the parents of Charlie's classmates, and he-"

"_What about him_?"

She sighed, her jaw working as she tried to force the completely words running through her mind into a coherent sequence and out of her mouth.

"_Darcy? What about him?_"

"He could be Bucky's clone," she blurted. "He looks _just_ like him."

The line went silent, and then, "_What?_"

"I wish I was kidding."

Steve coughed, "_I don't, I, are you _sure?"

"I only got a quick look before he, Carter, that's his name, went upstairs, but at first I could have _sworn_ Bucky finally decided to ditch the hobo chic deal he's been rocking since you brought him in."

"_Okay, if you're sure then you're sure_."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, "Can you just come down here?" Like she needed to ask. He was probably halfway there as she rambled. "The last thing we need is to worry about the evil H and cloning, or even something worse that I don't even want to think about in case it somehow comes true."

"_Of course. We'll get to the bottom of this. Give me ten._"

"Sure. Wait, Steve," she caught him before he hung up, and the echo of a door slamming shut sounded in the background of the call. "How do _you_ know where I am right now?"

"_Bucky mentioned it. I think he was worried about you going out without protection. I told him the story about that time you used your taser on Thor_."

Her brow ticked, "Bucky was worried about _me_?"

"_He doesn't like that the Tower's being surveilled by Ross' people, I think,"_ he reasoned, and she could hear someone talking in the background, but wasn't sure who it could have been. "_Hang tight, I'll be there in a few_."

Steve hung up, and Darcy looked down at her phone, her face lit up by the glowing screen until it timed out.

Since when did Bucky talk to Steve about _her_?

"Huh," she muttered, sparing a glance back inside, and she could see Serena chatting with a tall brunette.

Shoving her musings onto the backburner, she slipped her phone away, shaking her head as she went back inside.

* * *

Darcy kept her eye on the staircase _Bucky's fucking clone_ disappeared to as she made small-talk with one of Charlotte's teachers, and Meg was in the middle of telling a story about part of the cross-country move she took to take the position at Constance when she broke off mid-sentence, her hazel eyes flaring wide, "Oh, um _wow_."

Her brows furrowed at the strange segue, and it took a second before Darcy felt the pressure on eyes on her back.

Steve and Clint—and what took them so damn long—were making their way through the ballroom.

"Hey you two," she tried to keep her voice even, Steve glancing around the room—for the clone or _whatever_ Carter was—while Clint smiled and kissed her cheek, and she smirked as she turned back to Meg. "This is my neighbor, Steve Rogers, and our fellow, uh, building-mate, Clint Barton. Steve, Clint, this is Meg Powell. She's one of Charlie's teachers this year."

Meg snapped out of her surprise a lot quicker than Darcy thought she would, "It's nice to meet you both," she glanced at Darcy. "I didn't realize that-"

"That the Stark Endowment actually meant we lived in the building," she finished with a grin. "I told Charlie to try not to advertise since we have to vet any of her potential play dates."

Still a little shocked, Meg nodded anyway, and Darcy felt a little bad for throwing so much at her at once, "Well like I said," she looked back to the pair. "It's great to meet you both."

Well maybe she wasn't going to run off, and that was a _really_ good thing.

Darcy grinned, "_Meg_," she drawled as she turned to the man at her side. "Grew up in Iowa. _Waverly_, Iowa."

"Really?" Clint's eyes were bright. "You did?"

Meg nodded, and Darcy clapped her hand on Clint's arm, "So why don't _you_ _two_ talk about the ye olde homestead while I introduce Steve to some members of the parent-teacher board."

They walked away, Darcy linking her arm through Steve's, and Clint rocked on his heels as he turned to the tall brunette, raking a hand through his hair, "So, uh, Waverly?"

"Interesting place," she shrugged. "I got out as soon as I could. Was accepted to a small liberal arts college in California when I was sixteen. You?"

A bashful grin crossed his face, "Actually, I joined the circus."

She tilted her head, "I think I can see that. Is that where you learned the archery thing?"

"Yeah," he nodded and gestured to the hallway that led to the hotel bar, "I could tell you about it? Or do you have to stick around and chat up the parents?"

Meg shook her head and grinned, "Something tells me they won't miss me if I sneak off for a little while."

* * *

Darcy glanced over her shoulder and watched Clint lead the tall brunette out of the ballroom, and Steve nudged her side with his elbow, "Matchmaking Darcy? Really? I thought you said something was going on."

"I'll have you know that I am a champion multitasker," she poked him in retaliation and grinned as he tried to shift away from her. "And it's not like he doesn't deserve something nice after the shit parade he's been trapped in the last couple years. What's nicer than a woman who teaches preschool?"

"Darcy, I don't know. What if-"

She frowned at the look on his face, and then shook her head, "He needs to get back on the horse something."

"Yes, but," he sighed. "Never mind. You didn't call me here because you were worried he's getting a little too good at_ Duty Calls._"

"_Call of Duty_," she corrected, but the impish grin on his face told her he knew exactly what he was talking about, and she wrinkled her nose right back. "And I know. Come on, they're over there."

Serena's eyes were bright as she gestured animatedly to the brunette Darcy vaguely recognized from the cover of the fashion magazines Pepper liked to flip through when she was unwinding, "Darcy! You found a friend!"

"Well, Steve was in the neighborhood and thought he'd drop by," the lie flew from her mouth in a rush and she forced herself to take a breath and calm the fuck down. "Steve Rogers, meet Serena Baizen and-"

"Blair Bass," Blair held a hand out, her brown eyes narrowed as Steve shook it.

Before he could say anything though, Serena put a hand on Darcy's arm, the other waving at the staircase she'd been eyeing most of the night, "Carter, Chuck! Come meet Darcy!"

Following Serena's gaze, Darcy felt Steve still and grasp her arm tighter as the two men made their way back downstairs, the one who looked like Bucky taking the lead.

So at least she wasn't imagining things.

Serena took Carter's hand and let him kiss her cheek before she made introductions, and his eyes were bright the second she said Steve's name, "Steve Rogers, the Howling Commando, right?"

"Most people tend to recognize me from stories of some of my more recent exploits," he grinned, but Darcy could feel the barely-restrained tremor racing through his hands as he held her tight.

Carter shrugged, "My grandmother loved to tell me and my cousins stories about you and the Howling Commandos."

"She was around during the war?"

"Oh yeah," his grin was wide as he nodded. "She always talked about how she and her friend went on a double-date with you and Sergeant Barnes the night before he shipped out."

Glancing up at Steve out of the corner of her eye, Darcy watched his eyes tick up to the left as he thought back to that night, "Your grandmother," he swallowed, his face going pale. "_Connie_?"

"Yes! That was her!"

Serena laughed, "Wow, what a small world!" She turned to Carter. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

He shrugged, and Darcy grabbed two glasses of champagne off a passing waiter, shoving one into Steve's free hand as she delicately sipped at her own, "You have _no_ idea."

"Oh my gosh, you _have_ to tell us about the double date," Blair gushed. "Connie was _gorgeous_ back in the day. It must have been amazing."

Steve ducked his head, red blooming over the back of his neck, "I actually signed up with the army that night. Bucky's the one who took Connie and Bonnie out dancing after Howard's show."

"What's it like living with Tony Stark after knowing Howard so well?"

Darcy watched as Steve's jaw ticked at Serena's question, "It's an _experience_," he smirked, and that _did_ seem genuine. "Will you excuse me a minute?"

He untangled his arm from Darcy and darted out to the balcony, and she sighed, "Sometimes it's hard for him to reconcile that most of everyone he knew have been gone for decades."

It was only sort of a lie.

"I hope we didn't pry too hard," Carter winced, and he really _did_ look like Bucky when he was bashful.

_Crap_.

She waved a hand, "It's okay. I'll go talk to him," she looked down uncertainly at the glasses in her hands before Chuck reached out and plucked them from her grip. "Thanks. I'll be right back."

Steve wasn't pacing up and down the length of the balcony like she thought he would, and she leaned back against the wall to the right of the glass-paned doors, "So what do you think?"

Stopping, he raked a hand through his hair and leaned against the railing, looking back into the room where the Baizens were mingling with some of the other parents in Margo and Charlotte's class, "That's _Bucky_."

"Do you really remember going out with them?"

"I _do_," his eyes were still wide. "Bucky never said, he _never_ mentioned her when we were overseas."

"There _was_ a lot going on," she rubbed her forehead. "So what now? How do we tell Bucky that he probably not only has a living _grandson_, because there's no way Carter is anything _but_ that, but also a _great-granddaughter_, when he doesn't even remember who he _is_ at times?"

He sighed, "Darce, I think he knows more than he lets on."

"And I know he _hides_ more than he lets on," she waved a hand. "But that's not even part of the point right now. How do we tell _any_ of them? For all they know, he died back in Alps, but it's barely been a week, and Charlie and Mo are attached at the hip. We won't be able to keep this from any of them for long."

For a long minute, he looked down at his feet, and she could see the wheels turning as he did what he did best and _planned_, "We'll take it slowly," he finally said. "We bring in Bucky first, and when he's ready, we'll tell Carter and Serena."

"Fine, sure. I mean, what other choice do we have? But this is weird right? I mean, more than the fact that you're all a bunch of genetically modified superheroes?"

Steve sighed again and looked down to the busy street below, "I remember how Bucky used to be with women when we were young, but after Zola, why didn't I _ask him_?"

There were so many questions in his eyes, but she didn't have any of the answers he was begging for.

"Do you think he knew?"

She thought back to the time she spent with him, but her shoulders slumped as she shook her head, "No matter how much he recovers, I don't think we're ever going to get an answer to that question."

The blare of Steve's phone cut through whatever he would have said, though Darcy was pretty sure he was going to agree with her, and he pulled it from his jacket pocket, "What is it, Tony?"

As he listened, Darcy watched his jaw tightened and he shifted away from the railing, "Is everyone else okay?" He waited for Tony's reply before he glanced out to the city where the top of the Tower was peaking between buildings across town. "Have JARVIS lock down the entire floor. I'll be right there."

"What is it?" She asked as he hung up.

"Something's wrong with Bucky. I have to get back."

"What happened? He was fine when I saw him before I left."

He shook his head as he took two long strides to meet her by the door, "I don't know."

"Okay," she swallowed, her feet pinching in her shoes as she raced to keep up with him once they were inside. "Go on ahead, take Happy. I'll get Clint and we'll meet you at the Tower."

He dashed out of the room, and Darcy slipped off in the opposite direction.

"Darcy!"

She spun back around and saw Blair and Chuck standing a few feet away, "I'm sorry, I have to get going."

Blair frowned, "Is everything all right? We didn't pry too hard with Captain Rogers, did we?"

She shook her head and resisted the urge to blurt out everything, "No, no. Something came up back at the Tower. Can you tell Serena thanks for pushing me to come out tonight? I really appreciate it."

The Basses both looked confused, but Blair nodded anyway, "I will. It was nice meeting you and your friend."

"You too."

* * *

"So why Constance?" Clint asked as the bartender placed a pair of beers in front of him and Meg, the bar mostly empty with most of the hotel guests occupied by the party.

She shrugged, pushing an ashy brown lock of hair off her face as she sipped her Blue Moon, "I had been working as an au pair for a family of ex-pats living in France for three years after I graduated college, and they recommended me. When the headmistress called, I wasn't going to say no."

"You know, that's been happening a lot to the people who've fallen in with Stark," he laughed a little at her questioning look and explained. "We're all having trouble with saying _no _to him. Darcy especially, but I don't think she's even trying anymore."

"Really?"

"Stark likes to collect people," he resisted the urge to roll his yes.

Meg arched a brow, "_Collect_?"

"I think it's a crazy billionaire thing."

She let out a snort, then clapped one hand over her mouth, "I'm sure I'll pick up on that pretty quickly."

"It has its perks," he smirked as he met her hazel gaze. "How do you like teaching the kids?"

"Actually, I want to teach high school, but Headmistress Queller said there had been an incident a few years ago involving a student and a teacher who also grew up in Iowa," she rolled her eyes as she toyed with the napkin under her glass. "I try to ignore the irony in favor of appreciating that I have a _job_."

"And you're okay with teaching the little kids instead?"

One shoulder lifted, "They're _really_ adorable, so I guess it's worth it, for now. She did say that I could probably move up in a year or two."

"Well if they're anything like Charlie, you're in luck."

She grinned back at him, "Do you spend a lot of time with her?"

"Some. We all kind of live on top of each other, and she and Darcy spend a lot of time on my floor with her friend Jane. Kid's great at collecting people too. You should see her with Tony."

She blinked, "Tony, as in Stark? Didn't he say a couple years back that babies were definitely a _no_? Did he have a personality transplant or something after he fell out of that portal?"

"The kid's persuasive."

They chatted for a while, Clint telling Meg some stories of his early days in the circus, even the first time he picked up a bow, and he was almost surprised at how easy it was, even if she was a civilian.

A while after they broke away from the reception, Clint saw Darcy slip into the room through the reflection in the mirror above the bar, "Everything all right?" He asked as he turned on his stool, shifting away from Meg.

And when did he get so close to her in the first place?

"Where's Steve?"

Darcy didn't bat an eye, but favored Meg with an apologetic smile, "I hate to steal him, but Clint and I need to get back to the Tower," she met his gaze and the curiosity in it. "Steve's already on his way back."

"Darcy, what's going on?"

"Something about his _roommate_," she said pointedly, because as far as the world knew, they didn't when it came to Bucky Barnes, let alone his role as the Winter Soldier, or that he was living in the heart of the city.

And they wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

Clint nodded as he shifted off his stool, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, but Meg waved him off, "I got this," she shrugged off his objection. "You get out of here. You'll owe me one."

"Thanks," he tugged his jacket over his shoulders. "I'll see you around."

Snagging a pen off the bar, she scribbled her phone number on the dry edge of her napkin and handed it to him, "Count on it."

With a wave, he hesitated before following Darcy outside and watching as she handed his valet stub to one of the attendants, "So," she drawled as she sidled back up next to him. "Meg's nice, isn't she?"

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he steadfastly looked out into the street, "I know what you're doing Lewis."

"Oh don't be like that."

He snorted, "I don't know what you're talking about," he shook his head. "What's wrong at the Tower?"

"I don't _know_," she frowned hard as she shrugged, wringing her hands together. "Tony called Steve and told him something was wrong with Bucky. He told Tony to lock down our level and ran off."

He sucked a breath through his teeth, "That could be a problem."

"No shit."

Following her into the idling vehicle Clint turned out toward the street and as he waited for traffic to clear, he nudged her, "Hey."

"Yeah?"

He rolled his eyes and poked at her again, grinning when she shied away, smacking at his hands, "Thanks for that."

She lowered her hands, grinning impishly, "I wish JARVIS was around to record this moment."

"Don't _gloat_."


	6. Chapter 6

[212-555-9657]: _Hey, it's Clint. Sorry I had to run out on you last night._

[212-555-0981]: _Is everything all right? Darcy looked worried_.

There was a two-minute break between texts.

[212-555-9657]: _It's fine. Or it will be. Soon. Anyway, I owe you a drink, don't I?_

[212-555-0981]: _I was going to give you a few days before I brought that up._

[212-555-9657]: _Is it bad that I don't want you to wait?_

[212-555-0981]: _Of course not_.

* * *

And now it was Sunday, and Darcy _still_ hadn't been allowed back down to the apartment she and Charlotte shared across from the pair of World War Two transplants.

"JARVIS, I _hate_ to be a pest, I really do, but Charlie and I have been in pajamas for a day and a half, and mine aren't even _mine_. As much as she loves this whole extended slumber party thing we have going on, Charlie has school tomorrow, and I _need_ _real pants_."

She stood in the elevator, her arms crossed over and old t-shirt she scavenged, along with a pair of shorts, from the back of Jane's closet, but the rest of the rail-thin woman's clothes couldn't even attempt to contain her curves.

And she was _not_ about to wear her dress for consecutive days.

_Especially_ without the excuse of an _epic_ one night stand to go with it.

She _did_ have standards, after all.

But even with those standards, the doors stayed open and JARVIS refused to move the car one measly floor, "I am afraid I must comply with Captain Rogers' orders on this matter, Ms. Lewis."

"JARVIS, I just want to go into my apartment, just me," it was probably futile to barter with a computer, but that wasn't going to stop her, and she was _desperate_. "Five minutes, _at most_. I'll lock the door, and you can totally monitor me the whole time. Even when I'm in the bathroom."

"Ms. Lewis, I am afraid, among other things, that there is currently no door to _lock_ to ensure your security."

What the hell?

She blinked as she looked down at the floor, and wished for a moment that she had x-ray vision, "JARVIS, are they all right down there? I don't care what Steve says, do _not_ lie to me."

The AI was quiet.

"JARVIS, please don't make me call Tony."

If an AI could sound exasperated, he would sound like he did at that very moment, "Ms. Lewis, Captain Rogers is handling the situation. On his orders, I am ensuring that he and Sergeant Barnes remain isolated on their home level. As such, I can not allow you downstairs."

She sighed, running her fingers through her tangled hair, "Fine," she deflated. "Can you order me and Charlie some clothes so we can get by until we _can_? Like I said, I _really_ just want to put a pair of pants on, and Jane's really don't fit."

"Of course, Ms. Lewis. A package will arrive within the hour."

"Thanks," she let her shoulders drop as she shuffled back out the open doors and back toward Jane and Thor's.

"I _am_ sorry for the inconvenience, Ms. Lewis."

And now she felt guilty.

"I _know_. You're still my favorite, J."

Back inside, Thor was sitting on the floor in front of the couch while Charlotte stood on the cushions behind him, her little hands buried in his hair as she twisted it into a sloppy braid.

Jane was perched on the recliner next to them, her phone in hand as she gleefully snapped photo after photo of the pair, "No luck?"

Darcy grinned down at Thor as she curled up next to the coffee table, propping her arm on it and her chin on her palm, "I would say your man has more information from the flybys he thinks we don't know about than what I managed to wrangle out of JARVIS."

The demigod squared his shoulders, but didn't look sheepish as he met Darcy's teasing gaze, "It's for your safety, and that of the building."

"I know," she sighed as she tapped her fingers against her cheekbone. "JARVIS _did_ tell me that our apartment is kind of broken."

Lowering her phone, Jane arched a brow, "_Broken_?"

"Well at the very least, I don't currently have a door to lock even if he could let me downstairs," she shrugged, because it's not like the renovation crews wouldn't be on it as soon as the lockdown lifted, _whenever _that was. "He's ordered some clothes so the Kid and I can get through the next few days. Thanks for letting us take back over the place again."

Jane waved a hand and rolled her eyes at Darcy. "I just hope Barnes snaps out of it soon, whatever it is."

Hands still stuffed in Thor's hair, Charlotte tilted her head, "Is Bucky okay?"

They flinched, "He will be," Jane recovered first. "Steve is taking care of him."

"Will he teach me more Russian soon?"

Jane and Thor's eyes snapped to Darcy, and she winced, "Did I not mention that? It's a thing. Their thing."

Thor's shoulders squared as best he could without disrupting Charlotte from her perch against his back, "Their _thing_? Darcy, in Allspeak, your vernacular does not always translate with its proper intent."

She huffed, "He enjoys spending time with her. I think it helps him, to be able to do something positive for someone else."

"Darcy," Jane sighed, placing her hands on her lap. "Are you sure that's a good-"

"Idea? Is it safe? Bucky thinks I'm insane, if that makes you feel any better."

"Well I can't say it does."

Stretching her arms across the table, Darcy shrugged, "Look, if I thought Charlie was in danger here, I wouldn't have asked Pepper if we could stay. That's that. Anyway, Bucky's pretty good at avoiding her, avoiding all of us, when he knows he's having issues being around people. Look at where we are now, locked out of the floor we live on."

"_Darcy_."

"_Jane_."

They stared at each other for a long minute before Jane blinked first and rubbed her fingers over her forehead. "Okay fine, I'll take your word for it."

"Thanks boss-lady."

* * *

It was another two days before JARVIS let Darcy back downstairs, and the apartment was missing its door, most of the wall that encased the half-bath just off the destroyed foyer, and the living room was pretty much in shambles.

Her eyes were wide as she took in the damage.

What the hell _happened_?

The Stark Industries repair team was already hard at work by the time she had a chance to see the state of things, a contractor going over blueprints in her foyer while electricians were repairing the wiring in a _body-shaped _hole —though Bucky's or Steve's, Darcy couldn't tell—in the wall that led to what used to be Steve's bedroom.

She didn't have all that much longer to muse over it, or any of the million questions she had for two specific men who were nowhere to be found, before she had to get to the lab.

After a long morning, Darcy shuffled into the kitchen to make some snacks for herself and the scientists when she saw a redhead that was definitely _not_ Pepper Potts standing in front of the refrigerator.

"Oh," she murmured, and when the woman turned around at the sound of her arrival, she blinked. "Agent Romanov?"

Natasha tapped her chin, "You are Darcy Lewis. It's nice to finally meet you," she pointed the manicured finger back to the refrigerator. "Could you tell me who framed my postcard?"

Laughing sheepishly, she shifted from one foot to the other, "That'd be me," she ran her fingers through her hair, wincing at the tangles, while Natasha's was curled to perfection like it had been during the Battle of Manhattan, _of course_. "It's one of the best threats I've ever seen. I couldn't let Clint hide it in his apartment."

Of course, now that she'd said that, to one of the modern world's greatest spies, a role where paper trails were not supposed to exist, Darcy was probably going to get a new hole ripped in her backside.

Eventually though, Natasha tilted her head and a mischievous smirk crossed her lips, "Good. Sometimes Clint needs a reminder that being alone doesn't always help in recovery. You have been a good friend to him."

Her brows furrowed, "You've been off the grid since D.C., right?" Natasha nodded once. "So how do you know that?"

"I was wrapping up my assignment in Los Angeles with Stark while Clint was stationed with you in New Mexico. We would talk."

"Talk?" Darcy tilted her head. "You two are-"

And suddenly, throwing Clint at Meg like she did the other night seemed liked a momentously _terrible_ idea.

"_Partners_."

"Oh, okay," Darcy finally stepped into the kitchen as Natasha moved away from the refrigerator. "So what brings you back after all this time? Or is it classified?"

"No, no," she shook her head and leaned against the counter, her green eyes following Darcy as she flitted from one corner of the kitchen to the other. "Steve asked me to come in and help with Comr-with Barnes."

Stopping short, Darcy looked over her shoulder, brows furrowed at what Natasha almost called Bucky, but after a minute of searching her impassive face, she decided it was better to _not _try opening that can of worms, "Are they all right? I didn't see them this morning when J finally let me downstairs."

"They'll be fine. They should both be resting."

The way she said it made Darcy think that there was a veiled threat in her words aimed at one or both of them.

"Cool," as much as she wanted to ask about _what_ _the hell _happened to Bucky, Darcy went back to the salad she was throwing together—Bruce working in the labs meant that she had to step up the mass meals she made for the trio—but she was more than aware of Natasha's eyes on her back.

She was almost done when Natasha sidled up next to the table, "I am curious about something. Could you enlighten me?"

"Yeah, sure," she turned and saw her rifling through the pile of construction paper by the fruit bowl. "Oh, that."

"Your sister is learning Russian."

Darcy didn't bother asking how she knew about Charlotte because _spies_.

Or, more than likely, because _Clint_.

"Who is teaching her?"

She couldn't stop the smirk that crossed her face, "Never underestimate the persuasiveness of a toddler."

Both of Natasha's eyebrows rose, but before she could say anything, they heard a shout from the hall, "Hey Lewis, what's the holdup," Tony stopped short just inside the kitchen. "Oh, it's _you_."

Natasha didn't skip a beat, "Stark."

"And _what_ are you doing here?"

"Steve asked me to come in. I'm going to have lunch with Maria and Pepper while my movers deliver my things to my apartment," ignoring Tony's spluttering that she needed _permission _to move into _his_ tower, she turned to Darcy. "You should come with us. We have a lot to talk about."

She blinked, "I don't really think-"

Natasha cut her off with a grin, "Do not think, just say _yes_."

"Uh, yes. Would love to."

Tony cleared his throat, "Can I object to having the four of you together, _plotting_ things?"

Darcy shared a look with Natasha, "No."

"It's my building. I really think I can object."

"_No Tony_."

* * *

Lunch was one of the most strangely awesome experiences in her entire life.

Hands down.

Midway through the meal and a raucous retelling of the incident in D.C. from Natasha's perspective, Pepper waved a hand, the other bringing her water glass to her lips, "Never mind that, Tasha, we all saw the Triskelion go up in flames,"

"Good riddance," Maria muttered under her breath as she took another bite of her sandwich. "That building was _ugly_."

"But tell us more about that Sam Wilson," Pepper went on with a huge, almost maniacal grin. "Big flirt?"

She rolled her eyes, "_Huge_, but unfortunately not my type," Natasha turned to Darcy. "And what about you?"

Darcy dropped her forkful of the best kale salad she'd ever had back into her bowl, "What about me?"

"Tasha wants to know if you've been seeing anyone since you moved to New York," Maria translated when all Natasha did was arch a brow pointedly in reply to her question.

"Well that would be an emphatic _no_," she wrinkled her nose as thoughts of the Intern came to mind, but instead of bringing that up, she said, "Kind of hard what with the needy little sister."

A looked crossed Natasha's face like she didn't quite understand what Darcy meant, but then she shrugged, "Well if you ever decide you want to, I'll be happy to wingman for you."

Darcy's eyes were wide as she nearly choked on her drink, "Uh, thanks," she managed.

And here she thought her life couldn't get any crazier.

She really needed to stop thinking that.

* * *

Steve finally returned to the land of the living that night, joining the team for dinner and pointedly not talking about the fading bruises marring the entire right side of his face of the way he favored his right leg.

On the other hand, Bucky didn't resurface until the end of the week.

Darcy was prepared for him to be a little standoffish when he did, especially considering just how badly he reacted to _whatever_ it was that set him off—though no one who knew was saying _anything _on the matter.

She just didn't expect Bucky to be blackout drunk.

After a long day—or was it two? She wasn't entirely sure—in the labs, Darcy was cleaning up after shuffling Bruce to bed, pointedly reminding him that getting stuck on sequencing algorithms was normal and that the work would still be there in the morning.

She was setting his desk back to rights—he made a mess of epic proportions when he got so absorbed—when she was startled out of her fragmented mental checklist when she heard a metallic crash echo across the lab.

Whirling around, she pressed a hand to her chest, breathing hard, "Jesus Barnes," she snapped when she spotted who was slumped in the doorway, looking paler and much more ragged than the day he first arrived. "Warn a girl!"

All he did was grunt in response, and she tilted her head when he stared blankly at her with bleary, pupil-blown eyes, "Bucky," she took a cautious step forward, and then stopped when he tensed. "Are you all right?"

He waved a hand in what must have been a coherent response for him, but the entire movement just served to knock him off balance, "You are drunk," she narrowed her eyes. "Wait a second, we talked about this. I _remember_ this. You _can't_ get drunk."

"Not _easily_."

Shit, his liver probably looked worse than Tony's.

"Then I'm going to assume you've drunk a metric fuckton of _whatever_, but hate to break it to you, there's no alcohol down here. Tony's not even trying to brew his own brand of super vodka this week."

The look she got in return told her that Bucky hadn't actually processed a word she said, and then he jerked in surprise when the doorway he was leaning against chirped at him—the doors were trying to close—and his hands squeezed into fists as he took a shaky step inside.

"I'm here for the elephant tranqs."

"_Seriously_?"

His arm crashed against a metal filing cabinet—why did they have filing cabinets when everything in the lab was digital anyway—the echo ringing out through the room as he slumped against it, "I can't sleep, but I need to sleep," he slurred, eyes squeezed shut. "Where are they?"

"Actually, I think you might feel better if you had something to eat," as if on cue, her stomach growled. "I can make grilled cheese? BLT grilled cheese even, which is awesome. And reminds me that I don't think I've eaten anything in like, nineteen hours."

Bucky's eyes were focused on a spot on the floor between them as he shook his head, "Darcy, I just want to sleep."

Her heart lurched, and Darcy finally forced her feet forward, crossing the room with the intent to lead Bucky over to the leather couch that was in the lab for no other reason than the fact that Tony thought it made the lab seem more 'homey'.

But Bucky managed to duck around her, stumbling further into the lab and tripping over a discarded box as he neared the glass-front cabinet on Bruce's side of the room.

It was the most graceless she'd ever see him—which was scarier than it was weird.

His boots actually made _noise_ with each step he took.

"The only way you're going to get to sleep is if you get some _food_ in you," because lord knew she loved arguing with brick walls. "The tranqs won't help."

"I need to try. It'll work."

"Well of course it's going to work," she muttered as she rushed after him. "But it's not going to _help_!"

He beat her to the cabinets because she was slow and tired and apparently blackout-drunk!Bucky was still faster than she was, and she watched him search through the neat rows of syringes and vials before he found the syringes they kept on the off chance they could reach it and preemptively stop a Code Green.

"JARVIS?"

"Of course, Ms. Lewis," the AI said as the blue lights around the doors turned red from the lockdown protocol, metal shutters falling down over the already shatterproof glass.

An angry yell ripped from Bucky's throat as he smashed his left fist into the metal, and it dented, but held, "Damn it Darcy! I need it!"

"It will only make you worse!" she snapped when he rounded on her, his chest heaving, and she pinched the bridge of her nose as she tried to keep her own breathing under control. "Seriously Bucky, for the love of all that is holy, just _sit the hell down_!"

Darcy expected him to rage.

But he didn't.

When she opened her eyes and dropped her hand, she watched as Bucky's body shook with the force of the shudder that ran through it.

And then he squared his shoulders and walked, no _marched_, over to the couch.

His back was ramrod straight, his hands splayed on his knees as he forced his bleary gaze straight ahead, and guilt stabbed at her heart because Darcy knew she fucked this one up pretty badly.

Pressing her hand to her mouth as bile seared the back of her tongue, she shakily forced her feet to move, "Bucky," she whispered through her fingers. "Come on Bucky, please look at me."

He continued to resolutely stare straight ahead, and dread pooled in Darcy's stomach as she watched another shudder shake through him, "Bucky, come on," she dropped to her knees, leaning up so her face was in his eye line. "Bucky, that _wasn't_ an order."

She held her hands out, but made sure they hovered just above his knees, "Come on, you can stand down. Please?" He was looking at her, but wasn't _seeing_ her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone off on your like that. Come on, just stand down."

It took a few harrowing minutes of quiet coaxing before he let out a shuddering breath and he finally lifted his hands, gently resting his fingers against her palms, "I just want to sleep and not dream anymore," he rasped.

Her heart lurched again, and she swallowed hard, "I know, I know," she shifted his fingers in her grasp and rubbed her thumbs across his knuckles.

She could spend _way_ too much time cataloging the differences between his flesh and the rarely seen metal limb, but now was _not the time_.

"Will you let me try something before we resort to the Hulk drugs?"

It looked like he was going to answer—which was _really fucking encouraging_—but the words stuck in his throat, and he let his mouth hang open for a moment before he just nodded once instead.

Darcy's heart was still in her throat when he met her gaze again, but she was still sure he wasn't really seeing her, "Okay," she took a breath to steady her own frayed nerves. "Will you let me touch your head?"

He didn't object, just swallowed, and she could feel a tremor run through his hands and into hers as she shook her head, "We've been through this, I need an answer. Silence isn't consent, my friend."

Glaring down at their hands, at the steady way she gripped his fingers, he took a sharp breath through his nose, "_Yes_."

"Okay, okay," she slipped the fingers of his metal hand back onto his lap and sat down at his right, "Okay Bucky, I need you to lie down on your side."

After sitting long enough and staring down at a spot on the ground a few feet away, Darcy was sure he was going to tell her off and go back to the tranqs, but he eventually turned his bleary gaze toward her, "Come on Bucky," she urged gently as she squeezed his fingers. "Just go with it."

"Why aren't you afraid of me?"

That lump was in her throat again, and her eyes stung as he scooted away from her and dropped her hand, hesitating before he dropped his shoulder and rested his head on her lap.

"One too many blows to the head," she quipped quietly, ignoring the quiver in her voice. "Come on, bring your legs up too. There's enough room."

When he was settled, she gently nudged his head so his spine was in alignment, resting light fingers on the side of his neck while the other hesitated over his metal shoulder before she tapped it with two fingers, "Drop your shoulder and take a deep breath."

With the first, his shoulder shifted, and through the tear in his collar, she could see the edge of the metal where it fused—oh god, it was _fused_, and she was _this close_ to throwing up—to his torso, "You just keep doing that, I'll take care of the rest."

"It's not going to work. It's not going to stop the screeching."

Shit, was that what was going through his mind _all the time_?

"Why don't you just leave the rest of the expert, yeah?"

If only she actually believed her words.

Bucky let out a drunken, yet undoubtedly derisive snort, and she grinned as she slipped her fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair.

Her stomach lurched again when she swept her fingers over his scalp and discovered the bumps of countless, long-healed surgical scars that made jagged lines from his nape to the crown of his head, "Oh honey," she sighed, exhaustion hitting her as she scooted forward a bit and saw his eyes were still open and staring blankly ahead. "Do me a favor and start counting backwards from two hundred, yes?"

"Pochemu?"

A desperate giggle clawed from her throat as she dragged the pads of her fingers down to the back of his neck, pressing gently where it rested against her thigh, "Wrong Lewis sister, I don't know what that means. Just start counting."

Bucky sighed, "Dvesti, sto devyanosto devyat', devyanosto vosem',"

"You are such a little shit."

"Devyanosto sem', devyanosto shest',"

She shook her head as she rubbed the thumb of her other hand back and forth against his forehead, just below the line of his hair, "Oh what the hell am I going to do with you?"

Snorting, he kept counting, "Devyanosto pyat', devyanosto chetyre, I've been making a list, devyanosto tri,"

Somehow, Darcy managed to stop herself from startling so badly that he'd notice, especially since his breathing was finally beginning to even out.

"I'm going to give you the same benefit of the doubt that you gave drunk!melast month."

"Devyanosto dva, devyanosto odin, devyanosto,"

Bucky was asleep by the time he reached vosem'desyat.

Darcy waited until she was sure his breathing was completely even, his exhalations warming the top of her leg, and eventually slipped her hand out of his hair and lifted the collar of his shirt so she could get a better look at the part of his body he took such pains to keep hidden.

A thick row of deep, jagged scars radiated from below the metal plating, and hell if it wasn't at least part of what kept him awake day in and day out.

She was actually _really_ glad she hadn't eaten all day.

He let out a sleepy snuffle, and she snatched her hand away, but all he did was burrow deeper into her lap, his breathing returning to the even respirations in and out and in and out.

It took another minute to rebuild the courage to go back to his shoulder—because she was nosy _damn it_—and her fingers slipped under his shirt, tracing over the lines of the plating wrapped around the joint and then over the star she saw from the footage Natasha leaked onto the Internet.

Arching a brow at the head on her lap, she eventually reached into her back pocket and fished out her phone.

It was a little awkward, typing with her left hand, but thank you predictive texting, she managed to tap out the short message of, '_Missing a hobo? I'm playing 'Hey, that's mine!' In the lab._'

[212-555-1233]: '_You all right? I'm on my way_.'

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she considered typing that being a human pillow was very likely _not_ written in her staffing contract, but settled on snapping a selfie and sending that to Steve instead.

[212-555-1233]: '_I am so sorry Darcy_.'

'_Bucky Barnes is a cuddly drunk. Who knew?_'

She settled her phone on the arm of the couch and glanced up, "JARVIS," she whispered, trying to not flinch when she went back to rubbing her fingers through Bucky's hair and found more scars radiating over the right side of his skull. "I hope you've got pictures, because one day, I am going to use this as some seriously awesome blackmail material."

"Already downloaded to your cloud drive, Ms. Lewis."

"You the man, J. Robot. Man. Computer thing. _Fuck _I'm tired."

* * *

In the few minutes it took for Steve to get to the lab—and what did he do, scale the building from the outside or something?—Bucky shifted, drawing his legs up and curling his metal hand around her knee.

"Hi," she mouthed, JARVIS silencing the chime on the lab doors that none of the scientists ever really noticed.

Steve's eyes were swimming with concern, "You okay?"

She rolled her eyes, "He's fine, _ish_. I'm whatever," she swallowed, glancing back down at the head resting on her lap. "Did you, uh, did you know what they did to him? To his head, I mean."

"The brainwashing?"

"No," she looked back up, swallowed hard at the curiosity reflecting in his eyes. "He has scars. _All over_ his head."

He took a deep breath, and Darcy watched anger flash across his face, "It was in his file."

"Fucking monsters," she glowered, her voice a raspy whisper. "You make sure to destroy them, yeah? Rip them all to pieces."

Steve put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, "You don't have to worry about that," he looked down at Bucky, his eyes scanning his sleeping form. "Let me get him off you."

Smiling sideways, she watched as he curled a hand under Bucky's arm, but then flinched when the servos reacted and his hand tightened reflexively around her knee, "_Ow, shit_!"

Before it got to the point where he was going to leave _more_ bruises, or you know, break her kneecap, she stalled Steve with a hand on his wrist, "It's okay," she mouthed. "I don't think either of us are moving anytime soon."

He shook his head, "You've been up too long. I can move him."

"No, the last thing we need is for him to wake back up. It's okay, I'll stay."

"_Darcy_."

She swatted his arm away, "It's fine. He needs to sleep for as long as he can."

"It's not your responsibility."

Holding back a snort, she rolled her eyes, "It's not about that," she glanced down as Bucky let out another sleepy snort, tensing a little before he settled back against her. "Could you just do me a favor and check on Charlie for me? Make sure she's not looking for her study buddy."

"I will," he ran a hand over her hair before leaning down and pressing his lips to her forehead. "Call me if you need anything. _Seriously_. I'll come back and check on you in a little while."

She watched as he hesitated at the entrance before slipping out, and she waved cheerily before slumping against the back of the leather monstrosity and toeing off her shoes.

As she settled in, resting her head against the back of the couch, she sighed when Bucky shifted again.

God, her life was _weird_.

* * *

Oddly enough, Darcy did _not_ wake up with a crick in her neck and one of Tony's robots trying to draw a mustache on her face in Sharpie, which is exactly what she expected after a night in the lab.

But instead, she woke up in her own bed, tucked under the covers in two-day-old clothes.

Which, what the hell?

Rolling onto her side, she groped for her glasses, squinting until she found them resting on the far side of her nightstand where she definitely did not remember leaving them, and she rubbed her eyes as she sat up and slipped them on.

"JARVIS?"

"Good morning, Ms. Lewis."

She looked around her room, saw her shoes neatly lined up against the wall next to the door, and she swallowed as she tried to recall the night's events, "Did I hallucinate drunk!Bucky passing out on me last night?"

"That is a correct assessment. Sergeant Barnes delivered you to your apartment three and a half hours ago. I can have the footage downloaded to your phone, if you'd like to see for yourself."

Racking her brain for any hazy memory of the move, she came up with nothing and shook her head, "I'm sure it's a masterpiece," she looked to the window and saw the sun shining in on the clear morning. "What time is it? I gotta get Charlie ready for school, don't I?"

She didn't bother changing before she got Charlotte out of bed and the bleary-eyed Lewis sisters made their way to the common kitchen.

Which was… full of people?

Thor, Banner and Pepper? No surprise. They were all relatively normal-scheduled human beings.

Jane? Weird after a science bender, but _whatever_.

Natasha? Well, she didn't really know what was normal with her.

But Clint up before nine? Hell no.

Darcy narrowed her eyes as she pushed Charlotte in ahead of her, and the girl padded over to the seat she always claimed as hers, to Thor's right, "Good morning Thor!"

"Good morning, small one," he grinned over his coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon piled high on his plate.

Shuffling over to the coffeemaker, one of three on the counter, because of course, Darcy started stabbing at the buttons, "I see we have a full house this morning," she muttered as she searched for her mug. "Are we off to Avenge something or something?"

Clint was grinning from his perch at the breakfast bar.

"_What_?"

His grin widened, "Long night?"

She scoffed, "How do you even _know_?"

"I'm a _spy_."

Pouring sugar into her oversized mug, she rolled her eyes, "You're an _ass_."

She smacked her hand over her eyes at Charlotte's tiny gasp and the low chuckle that followed from like, half the occupants in the room, "What do you want for breakfast, Kid?"

Before Charlotte could answer, Darcy was already going for the bag of kids pancakes stashed in the freezer and grabbed a handful, and she tossed them on the plate when she finally caved from the looks everyone was favoring her with.

"_What_? Did Tony show you guys the lab's video feed or something? It's _not_ a big deal."

"Darcy, it kind of is."

She resisted the urge to pace as she stabbed thirty seconds into the microwave timer, "Well what was I supposed to do Jane? Let him at the Hulk tranqs and drag a hundred and ninety pounds of comatose Russian assassin through the halls? Come on, that's just mean."

"But it's what you _should_ have done."

Arching a brow, she faced Natasha, who sat next to Clint, a mug of tea between her hands, "Seriously Agent Romanov? He needs help, not Bruce's not-so-happy meds. No offense, man. And it's not like he hurt me. He passed out. On my leg. And let's be real, it was a _long_ time in coming."

Natasha's eyes went hard, "That does not mean he is not every inch the Winter Solider when he is in a state like that. You could have been hurt very badly if he wasn't as responsive as he was to you."

"But it _worked_."

The microwave's beep shattered the tense silence that fell over the room, and Darcy jumped as she whipped the plate out and put it in front of Charlotte. She was stalled from resuming her short pacing back and forth in the narrow space in front of the refrigerator when Thor wrapped his hand around her wrist in a gentle grip and tugged her to his side.

Letting out a put-upon sigh, she curled her arm around his shoulders, "I know, I know," she muttered as he pressed his palm against her back.

"We just want to ensure your safety."

Jane was nodding in agreement with Thor when Natasha cleared her throat, "You will train with me in the mornings after you drop Charlotte off at school. We'll start today."

Darcy blinked, "Say what?"

The redhead favored her with a look that told her she wasn't about to repeat herself, "It's something that should have been discussed the second you set foot in the building. You _and_ Doctor Foster."

"What?"

Snorting at Jane's surprised chirp, Darcy let go of Thor and made her way back to her coffee mug, watching Clint as he looked down at his phone, "And just _who_ are you chatting with this bright and shiny morning?"

Her question distracted Natasha from whatever she was saying to Jane, who was not remotely thrilled with the idea, and she turned, her green eyes narrow as she leaned forward and tried to get a look at his phone.

Clint scowled as he turned the screen from her nosy gaze, "Darce, you're a menace."

"But I am your favorite," she winked as she swiped her mug off the counter and grabbed a packet of PoptTarts. "Twenty minutes and we're out Charlie. Apparently I have to go put on yoga pants," she called over her shoulder.

Walking into the hall, she arched a brow when she spied Bucky getting back onto the elevator, "You hear all that?" She murmured as he let her slip in ahead of him, and then pressed the button for their floor.

He shrugged and leaned against the wall of the car, but didn't say anything else.

"Just _how_ hung-over are you right now?"

Bucky shrugged again as the doors opened, and she made her way out, but stalled when a hand—one made of metal, and _that_ was new—curled around her elbow, "Yeah?"

Without a word, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and Darcy's eyes widened as she tried to keep her coffee from spilling all over his chest, "Uh, okay," she muttered quietly, pressing her free hand to his side.

They stood there, between the elevator doors, for a long minute before she felt his lips press against the side of her head, "Thanks," he rasped before he let her go, slipping around her and into the hall.

Despite _all_ her efforts, her heart fluttered _hard_ in her chest as she watched him circle around the repairmen and enter his apartment.

* * *

"So, you're actually serious about this," Darcy said as she stepped into the training room after dropping Charlotte off at school.

Natasha was sitting in the center of the training mat on the far side of the room, and she looked over, eyebrow arched, and she held Darcy's gaze for a moment before gesturing to the spot in front of her, "Have a seat."

Toeing off her shoes at the edge of the mat and lining them up neatly next to Natasha's discarded pair, she padded over and sat down in the middle of the bright blue circle the redhead was sitting in, and then folded her legs like Natasha's.

"Before we do, you know, whatever this is, I just wanted to ask you," she faltered, felt her face turning bright red, and as much as she tried to tamp down on it, it just made her flush more. "I was thinking, and the other night when Bucky, when whatever happened, it was when I was out, and I was wondering, well, if I did-"

"Darcy," she reached out and covered Darcy's hands where they rested on her knees. "I am going to tell you the same thing I told Steve after I arrived."

She swallowed, "Yeah?"

"It's not about you," she paused to let that sink in. "It's not. It's about him. And you need to come to terms with that. You both do, really."

Darcy looked at Natasha, couldn't get a read on what she was thinking, "I'm not, I don't think I-"

Natasha cut her off with a gentle squeeze of her hands, "As important as you have become to Bucky since he returned, you did not trigger him that night you went out. His bad night just happened to coincide with it. That happens. You must not stop living your own life to help him recover his."

"I wouldn't-"

She smirked, "Well of course you won't. I'll be here to remind you."

"Thanks, I think?"

Natasha sat straight, linking her fingers together and stretching her arms over her head, "All the same, you do require at least _some_ training. It will make_ all_ of us feel better."

Wrinkling her nose, she sat back straighter, "Are you sure?"

She grinned, and Darcy suddenly felt very, very nervous, "Absolutely."


	7. Chapter 7

[BLOCKED ID]: '_Hello? Is anyone online?'_

[X53K947V]: '_This is a private channel_.'

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: '_I know. I'm looking for someone familiar with, I don't even know why I'm saying this, but the geo-political impact of Russian ballet on the modern cultural climate_.'

[X53K947V]: '_You may have come to the right place._'

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: _'Then I have actionable intel on a large cell of terrorists who trace their beginnings to World War Two. My people don't have the resources to take down a group this size, but I've been told that yours do._'

[X53K947V]: '_How do I know this isn't a trap?'_

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: '_I don't even know who I'm talking to, but I was told YOU and your people were trustworthy_.'

[X53K947V]: '_Who sent you to me? How did you get access to this channel?_'

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: '_A friend_.'

[X53K947V]: _'Who?_'

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: '_She said to tell you it's The Cavalry. And I got access to this channel because I'm good at what I do._'

…_typing….typing…typing_

[BLOCKED ID]: '_Hello? You still there?_'

[X53K947V]: _'Tell me about the cell_. _If this falls through, tell The Cavalry I will hunt her down._'

* * *

Darcy's first workout with Natasha was _awful_.

The next three were even worse.

After her fifth grueling workout in as many days—and she was just learning how to _avoid_ injury the right way—Darcy stumbled out to the common level in search of an ice pack or twelve when her phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unfamiliar local number.

Even lifting her phone to her ear as she accepted the call sent twinges of pain radiating down her shoulders and back, and she stifled a groan as she pressed on, "Hello?"

"_Darcy? It's Blair Bass. I got your number from Serena. That okay?_"

She resisted the urge to snort, because it didn't really matter if it wasn't.

"What can I do for you, Mrs. Bass?"

"_Please, call me Blair. And come out to dinner with us._"

Darcy stopped walking—which might have hurt _more_ than her slow and steady shuffle—and actually pulled her phone from her ear, looking down at it to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, "Huh?"

Blair didn't seem to notice her confusion as she went on, "_Chuck and I are going out for sushi at Jewel Bako with the Baziens next Saturday night. We like to go out, you know, as couples, every week or so. You and Captain Rogers should come with us this time so we can all have a chance to get to know you._"

What?

She blinked, "Steve and I aren't a couple."

"_It seemed like you were the other night. Our mistake,_" there was a teasing lit to her voice. "_Well then, you should come anyway. Carter and Chuck never take the 'no shop talk at the dinner table' rule to heart, so Serena and I would love the chance to outnumber them for once._"

"Okay, sure."

"_Perfect! We'll pick you up at eight. Talk to you soon!_"

What in the world was she getting herself into?

Darcy's eyes were wide as she looked down at her phone, the screen dimming before it blacked out, which knocked her back into reality, and she tapped it against her lips as she continued forward.

Really, what was she thinking when she decided to enroll Charlotte at Constance?

Okay, well, she knew what she was _thinking_, getting Charlotte into a good school and all because that would only do wonders for her future, give her way more opportunities for her life than Darcy had at that age.

But to be taken under the wings of two of the school's most notorious alumnae—she did some research the day after she met Serena, and _boy _did she have questions about some of their exploits—well that part she didn't exactly expect.

Finally, she reached the freezer, yanking the massive bottom drawer open and flipping the lid on the inner drawer filled with ice packs, all the while resisting the urge to just _sit_ on it.

There may have been space age padding on the floor in the gym, not to mention halfway up most of the walls, but that didn't mean shit to Natasha and her crazy ninja skills, flipping Darcy up one side the room and down the other.

Grabbing one pack, she gingerly stuffed it between her back and the waistband of her yoga pants, shivering as the cold touched her spine, and she grabbed one more before she nudged the drawer closed with her foot.

She pressed the pack against her right shoulder as she padded over to the breakfast bar and levered up onto a stool.

Darcy didn't know how long she sat—and didn't care—when she felt a warm hand press against her neck, massaging gently, and she peaked one eye open to see a black and purple shirt in the corner of her vision, "You're partner's a meanie," she whined.

"Tasha's got your best interests at heart," he corrected, adjusting the ice pack with his other hand. "Apparently you mean a lot to a lot of very famous people. Not just Thor."

She snorted, "You have no idea what Tumblr says about your butt."

"And I don't _want_ to know."

A laugh bubbled from her lips, "It gets better. Apparently they think Steve's torso has the proportions of a Dorito, and people are campaigning for Frito-Lay to reach out and ask Steve to endorse them."

"Darcy, you've taken one too many hits to the head," he gently grabbed her arm and urged her off her stool. "Come on you."

"Ugh, no," she whined as he urged her into the living room. "I don't want to move, for like, ever. Clint, you're the _worst_."

He ruffled her sweaty bun with one hand, "Just to the couch. I'll help make your back feel better."

Plopping down by the arm, he took her shoulders and turned her, urging her to rest her chest against it, and then he slipped the ice back out of her pants, "No," her whine echoed through the room. "My cold."

"You had it on too long. Stop fighting and trust me."

"Ugh," she slumped over and pressed her forehead against her arms. "Don't trust creepy jackbooted thugs."

"Oh, don't be like that," he pressed his hands to her shoulders and carefully slipped his thumbs along the lines of her scapula. "You know I'm your favorite jackbooted thug."

A sound that might have been a cross between a moan and a pained yelp passed her lips as he worked the knots out of her shoulders, the steady pressure of his knee at the base of her spine pretty much the only thing keeping her upright.

"_I hurt_."

Clint squeezed her shoulder, "All part of the life," he sighed. "I really should have thought of it when we were in New Mexico."

"I would have pitched a fucking fit if you pulled this out of your hat back in Puente. And Jane would probably hit _you_ with her van."

Snorting derisively, he did something to a knot on her right side that sent spasms down her back, and he pressed hard to keep her from falling off the couch, "That woman's driving skills are something else."

"Ugh."

"Come on," he patted her shoulders, chuckling when she winced again. "You need to move or it's just going to get worse by the time you have to go pick up the kid. What's she got today, soccer practice?"

At the thought of actually _moving, _she let out a disgusted noise from the back of her throat, "It's field hockey, actually, which I didn't even know was a _thing_ until I moved to the east coast. And I guess you're right. For once," she amended before he could lord it over her. "I told Bucky the other day that I'd make him some grilled cheese BLTs. You can help. And by help, I mean reach things because my arms are still numb."

Clint tapped her back with his palm, "Yeah, yeah sure."

* * *

With a plate in one hand, Darcy tapped on the door to Bucky's apartment with the other.

For the most part, he had been holed up inside since the incident in the lab, and when Bucky finally opened the door, he blinked when he saw her standing there, "Darcy."

He looked like shit.

"Hi. You should eat."

Tilting his head, he eventually stepped aside, "Hi."

She breezed into the kitchen, wrinkling her nose delicately at the mess of plates and cups in the sink—because _men_, apparently—and rifled through the cabinets until she found a stack of paper plates.

"You do anything exciting lately?" she asked as she doled out lunch. "Natasha kicked my ass again this morning, and then I'm going to go back to breaking the laws of physics with Jane after I pick Charlie up from school."

Bucky was quiet, and she could see him watching her as she shuffled through the kitchen from his perch in the doorway, and when she met his gaze, he shrugged, "I don't know."

"How's the uh," she tapped the side of her head. "Noise?"

He shrugged again, "Still there. Always is."

Darcy tried to keep the constipated look off her face as she grabbed the plates and cocked her head toward the living room. "Well if there's one thing that'll quiet it down for a bit, I think it would be _Frozen_."

"What?"

"Happy animated children's movie with a strangely and unexpectedly ignored undercurrent of parental neglect," she made her way over, gently nudging him along with her elbow. "Come on. Hey JARVIS, can you pull down the movie from the digital archive?"

"Of course, Ms. Lewis."

Bucky dropped onto the couch and Darcy followed after him, pointedly ignoring his frown when she sat down on his left side, holding one plate out to him, and then snatching it back after a second, "You really don't have to do that."

"Do what?"

"Don't think I haven't noticed how you make a point to hide your left hand," she tried to ignore how he flinched and let it fall to his lap. "You don't have to. It's a part of you. It's _been_ a part of you for longer than I've been alive."

He sighed, "_Darcy_."

"Just saying," she finally gave up the plate, curling up with her own as she turned back to the television, which was already cued up to the movie's snowy, blue-soaked introduction.

Bucky finally took a bite, pausing when he tasted the flavors of the cheddar cheese, thick-cut bacon, and lettuce melded together, "Charlotte is a much better assistant than Barton."

"How did you," she broke off with a small smile. "Right. Spy. Stupid question."

"So you two are close."

"Charlie and I? Well duh? Don't really have a choice in the matter."

"No, you and Barton."

There was a look on his face, but even as exhausted as she was, Darcy knew where he was going, and resisted the urge to snort.

"You think Clint and I are," she stopped trying and broke off with a laugh. "No, no, not _even_. He's like, one of my bros, on the level of, I don't know, Thor and his Asgardian war buddies or something. When he was stationed in New Mexico with Jane and me, I made him keep me in beer to make up for the fact that his boss stole my iPod. And then he went and died before he could give it back to me. That jerk."

"Died? It wasn't-"

"Hydra? No. I don't know how much you know about Thor's brother Loki and his 'it's all about me' shit fit that he went through when he found out he was adopted, but he stabbed Agent Coulson through the chest right before he sent creepy alien lizards from another galaxy to attack Manhattan."

"Oh."

"Yeah 'oh'," she shrugged. "Just don't bring it up around Thor. He always saw the good in Loki and is still super bummed that he scarified his life for Thor and Jane when the creepy elves attacked London. And Asgard. And the rest of the Nine Realms. Oh, and you know, you probably shouldn't bring it up around Clint either."

He arched a brow, and she shrugged, "Tony said it was something about a raging Wizard of Oz reference. I try not to pry, because when I did, Clint made a spaz face and hid on the roof for two days."

"You _really_ don't know how to debrief properly."

Again, she shrugged, shifting one foot and nudging his knee, "_Still_ not an agent," she sang before she tilted her head. "You know, that's the second time in like, the last two hours that someone assumed I was boinking someone I'm not. What's the deal with this day, am I right?"

Bucky shrugged and faced the TV, and if that wasn't a sign that he was done talking for the time being, she didn't know what was.

And people said she was terrible at reading people.

No, the Intern _still_ didn't count.

Idina Menzel's Elsa had just unleashed a blizzard on Arendelle and was rocking hard to the song of her independence when the front door of the apartment banged open, and Darcy saw the plate in Bucky's hand crinkle when he tensed at that and the sounds of shouting that followed it.

Darcy paused the movie and arched a brow when she realized it was Steve and Natasha's arguing voices that preceded them down the hall, the blonde walking backwards, his hands waving with the force of whatever he was saying to an angry Natasha.

In _French_.

Natasha spat something that had to be extremely unflattering at whatever Steve just said—if the glacial glare and the way she smacked a hand against the wall were anything to go by—before she noticed the two people in the living room and snapped her mouth shut.

Darcy resisted the urge to wave before Natasha threw her hands up in the air, muttered something else under her breath before she snapped at Steve again, and then stalked out of the apartment.

Letting out an angry grunt, Steve raked a hand through his hair, glanced into the living room and sighed before he stalked out after her, and the apartment door made a resounding slam as it closed behind him.

Bucky and Darcy sat in silence for a good three minutes after they were gone, "Well," she drawled as she finally looked away from the empty hallway. "And here I thought they couldn't get any hotter."

Bucky almost looked appalled, and a thousand points to her for getting him to make a face other than _angsty _mask.

"What?" She shrugged around another bite of the half of sandwich she'd been halfheartedly nibbling on for most of the movie. "Please don't tell me you haven't noticed."

"No, that's not," he winced, hunching in on himself. "Never mind."

She tilted her head, "You okay? I didn't hit on something, did I?"

"I'm fine."

"Remind me to add The Italian Job to the list of decent remakes that you missed while," she stuffed a fist over her mouth to stop herself from saying 'brainwashed'. "Indisposed. Oh, and Ocean's Eleven, Twelve if I'm in the mood."

He blinked at her, and then shrugged, and she smirked, "Well anyway, ten bucks says they end up screwing their frustrations out on each other by the end of the week."

Bucky's eyes went wide, "Um, I don't think that's going to happen. Ever."

"Oh really?"

"You don't speak any French, do you?"

"The only foreign language I speak is the Internet," she laughed at the look on his face, a hilarious cross between constipation and fear, and he really was expressive for a guy who hadn't actually been _allowed_ to express himself for seven decades. "So what were they bitching about?"

He swallowed, "I think it might have been about a mission. They were _discussing _her source. There's something about them that Steve doesn't like."

"Oh."

* * *

"Darcy! Darcy! Darcy!"

Clad in a white shirt, navy shorts, and knee socks that were absolutely _covered_ in grass stains, Charlotte sprinted over to Darcy once she spotted her sister standing with the other parents at the front gate.

Her hair was flying through the air behind her, almost whacking the other little girl running at her side, "Darcy!" Charlotte squealed, stopping before she ran head first into Darcy's knees. "I scored a goal in field hockey today!"

"Did you? That's great," she grinned as she flicked a piece of grass out of her hair, and then looked at the girl standing next to Charlotte. "Hey Mo, did you have fun too?"

The girl tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear and nodded brightly, "I scored a goal too! Miss Meg says our team won! But that the team that didn't win also did good things too!"

"Well that was very diplomatic of her," Darcy laughed, looking across the field to where the woman in question was talking to a couple of the other students, gently admonishing them from tearing out the grass, which meant it was probably the Terror Twins.

Charlotte reached out and tugged on Darcy's shirt, "What does diplomatic mean?"

"Oh, I know!" Mo squealed, jumping up and down. "My Mommy says it's like when my Daddy says something wrong but she agrees with him anyway because she doesn't want him to feel bad."

Snorting back a laugh, Darcy patted Mo's head, "That's certainly one way to put it," she glanced around, but didn't see the tall blonde standing amongst the cluster of parents. "Where is your mom anyway?"

Mo shrugged, "Aunt Dorota is picking me up from school today, because Mommy had to go see Uncle Nate," she said, like it was the most important thing in the world. "Can Charlotte come sleep over at my house?"

Resisting the urge to wince, because the last thing Darcy needed was to see Carter and spill the beans about Bucky, she forced herself to nod anyway, "One day soon, definitely."

"Yay!"

Both girls cheered, and Darcy couldn't stop grinning fondly as she watched the girls hug before Mo darted off to the opposite side of the grass field where a plump woman was waiting, "Bye Mo!" Charlotte yelled. "See you next week!"

When she got to the woman's side, Mo looked back and waved before they headed off, and Darcy held a hand out, "Ready to go home, Kid? One of us needs a shower, and at the moment, it's definitely not me."

Charlotte took her hand and they made their way up the block, "I don't want to shower."

"But you spent the afternoon rolling around on the grass, so you're going to have to."

"But I don't _want_ to."

Looking up so Charlotte couldn't see, Darcy rolled her eyes, "Tough cookies, Kid."

When they stopped at the corner and waited for the light to turn, Charlotte tugged on Darcy's hand, "But," her mouth snapped shut and she tilted her head. "If I shower, can I have a cookie?"

"Since life doesn't work like that, as much as we'd all like it to, nope. Sorry."

She wasn't actually sorry.

A comedic frown crossed Charlotte's face, "But-"

"_Charlotte_."

"_Darcyyyyyy_."

* * *

After settling Charlotte down for a quick nap after eventually coaxing her in and out of the shower, Darcy strode into the lab and tossed her bag on her chair, "All right science lady, let's go break some figurative laws and shit."

Spinning around in her chair, Jane rolled her eyes, "Where in the world have you _been_?"

She waved a hand, "I finished my workout, had to do a thing, and then ran out to pick up Charlie from school."

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, "What happened with Bucky this time?"

"Nothing, nothing," she insisted as she leaned on Jane's desk. "I'm serious. I just thought it would be a good idea to make him something to eat. And it was. And yay progress for the fact that he ate food he didn't actually _watch_ me make considering he sort of almost but not really tried to stab me when we first met because he thought I compromised the _cheese._"

Propping her chin on her palm, Jane arched a brow, "So what's really bothering you?"

She waved a hand, grumbling a little at how well Jane had learned to read her over the last few months, "Well, I was invited out to dinner-" her eyes went wide. "Oh. My god."

"What?"

She clapped her hands over her mouth, muffling, "I was invited out to dinner!"

Jane walked over, grabbed her wrists, and forced her hands back down, "Darcy, _why_ is that a big deal?"

"_Because_," her eyes snapped to beyond Jane where Bruce and Tony were hard at work on the other side of the lab, but they barely spared her a glance before they went back to whatever they were tinkering with. "Because it _is_!"

Darcy shifted her hand in Jane's and wrapped her fingers around her wrist, tugging her out of the lab, "Come on."

"What are you-"

She pulled them into the elevator, "JARVIS, the roof please."

Jane finally managed to free her wrist from Darcy's grasp, "What are you doing?"

Shaking herself, she started pacing up and down the narrow space, her arms crossed tight over her chest, "We need privacy. _Crap._"

"For _what_!" Jane tried to step in front of her, but Darcy managed to get around her and kept pacing. "_Darcy!_"

The elevator doors opened to a glass-walled space that led to one of the Tower's rooftop patios, and Darcy rushed through the doors so quickly that it almost swung back into Jane as it closed, "Darcy Lewis, what as gotten into you?"

She pulled the sleeves of her flannel shirt over her hands to ward off the cool autumn breeze that whipped around the building, and watched as Darcy rested her hands on the railing and bowed her head.

Jane followed, propping her elbows on the railing next to Darcy and gently nudged her arm, "Hey," she nudged Darcy again until be finally looked at her. "Tell me what's going on. Do I need to call Thor?"

Darcy gnawed on the tip of her thumb, and then sighed, "I was invited to dinner by Blair Bass, one of the mothers from Charlie's school. Her, Serena Baizen, and their husbands."

"That's a good thing, right? Getting to know some parents from Constance?"

She glanced down at the city, craning her neck in the general direction of Brooklyn, "The other night, went I went to that reception, I found out something about Serena's husband, Carter," she laughed hollowly. "God, I can't believe I actually forgot to tell you."

Taking another deep breath, she looked back at Jane.

And then she told her everything.

* * *

Story told, she and Jane relocated to the padded lounge chairs set up around the giant fire pit Thor brought down from Asgard as a thank-you gift to Tony for his hospitality, "Wow," Jane's voice was muffled by the wind. "Wow."

"You're telling me," she twisted her hair around her fingers. "Not telling Bucky isn't the problem, I know he's not ready, but I don't know how I can face the Baizens with that kind of secret."

Jane barked a hollow laugh, "How in the world did you get wrapped up in this?"

"I was the only applicant for your internship. So, it's kind of on you."

Rolling her eyes, she nudged Darcy's leg with the point of her Converse-clad toe, "You're the one who stayed."

"Like I'd leave," she rested her head back against the cushion and laughed. "God, this day has been _so_ weird. What next, are you and I going to rip another hole in the middle of the galaxy?"

Jane smirked and sat up, holding a hand out, "Let's go try."

Arm in arm, they walked back inside, and Darcy even remembered to hold the door open this time, "Hey Jane," she said once the wind cut off and they waited for the elevator to make its way to the top of the building.

"Yeah?"

"Come to the dinner with me."

"What?"

"I'm serious. You'll be able to stop me if I start to spaz when Carter inevitably asks me if Steve told me any stories about Bucky like he's not my _neighbor_ and likes to teach my sister Russian."

She rolled her eyes, "Fine."

* * *

"Why can't I come with you?" Charlotte whined as she bounced on Darcy's bed.

Glancing at her through the mirror as she finished touching up her eye makeup, Darcy put down her mascara and turned around, "Silliness, this is a dinner for adults. That's why you're staying here with Clint."

Charlotte tilted her head, "But Clint's an adult!"

"Sometimes I wonder about that," she chuckled under her breath before padding to her closet for her leather boots. "But you two are going to have tons of fun tonight hanging out and eating too much candy with him and Thor."

"_How_ much candy?"

"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer."

She wrinkled her nose, "What's _dignify _mean?"

Poking her head out of the closet, she huffed a breath and made her way back to the bed, ruffling Charlotte's hair fondly, "Don't worry about it. Just think about all the fun things you're going to do tonight while I'm out. It's going to be great."

"Can _you_ stay and hang out with me and Clint and Thor?"

"Not tonight, Kid," she hugged her, and then flopped forward so they fell back on the pillows at the head of her bed. "But you can tell me _all_ about it in the morning. Sound good?"

Charlotte nodded brightly, "Okay!"

She was ready to go a few minutes later, and she grabbed her bag before she and Charlotte made their way upstairs to Jane and Thor's, the door hanging open as Jane's shouts echoed from the bedroom in back.

"Jane, are you ready?" She called as she dropped her bag on the couch. "They're going to be here soon."

There was a thump, before Jane called out, "_Ugh, five minutes Darce._"

Smirking, Darcy followed Charlotte into the kitchen where Thor was pulling snacks from the pantry and piling them on the island next to Mjolnir, "Jane borrowed a dress from Lady Potts for your repast this evening."

"Good for her. I don't think she'd be let in the restaurant in her usual jeans and t-shirt."

"It's a lot more comfortable though," Jane shouted from the bedroom.

With a laugh, Darcy leaned against the counter and started tracing the engravings on the side of the hammer while Charlotte climbed up onto one of the stools, "Thanks for agreeing to watch the Kid, Big Guy."

He waved a dismissive hand, "Of course. I plan to regale her with tales of my youth."

"Like the time you dressed in drag and almost got married?"

Tossing a light glare in her direction, he snorted, "Probably not _that_ tale."

Before Darcy had the chance to keep teasing him, the clicking of high heels heralded Jane's arrival, "Ugh, that dress is perfect," she groused, but smiled, and it widened when Thor stepped away from the pantry and took Jane's hand, pressing his lips to the back and she flushed bright red. "You look great."

Squeezing Thor's fingers, Jane ran her free hand down the skirt, smoothing it over her hip, "Are you sure? It's so _Pepper-y_."

"Am I sure?" Darcy scoffed. "You know, sometimes I wish I was a stick like you two, because oh my god her _clothes_."

"Don't even think about that."

Whirling around, Darcy saw Clint standing in the doorway, guitar in one hand as he looked at her with a frown, "Awe," she gushed as she glided over and kissed his cheek. "It is a _wonder_ how you're still single."

Clint went red to the tips of his ears and rocked back on his heels, "Yeah, well," he shrugged as Thor's laugh boomed through the apartment. "_Technically_."

"Oh _really_?"

He rolled his eyes, but before she could pepper him with questions, her phone rang, "That's probably them Jane," she called over her shoulder as she spun around and grabbed her purse off the couch. "Let's go. By Charlie, be good!"

* * *

"Darcy!"

Serena was halfway out of the limo as she waved, and Darcy grinned as she tugged Jane along behind her, because yeah, apparently she _was_ making new friends, "Hey there! Hope you don't mind if Jane comes along. She is _way_ beyond overdue for a night out."

"Of course not," she grinned as she got out and held the door open for them. "The more the merrier. I'm Serena."

"Jane Foster," she introduced, more focused on not falling off the curb in her heels and tugging down the hem of her dress as she slipped in behind Darcy.

Inside, Darcy waved at Blair and the two men bracketing her, "Thanks for the invite," she turned to Jane. "That's Serena's husband Carter, and Blair and Chuck Bass. Their son is a few years ahead of Charlie and Mo."

They made small talk on the way to the restaurant—mostly about the kids and school and one of the projects Blair and Chuck's son Henry was working on—and when they sat down at one of the tables at the back of Jewel Bako, Blair turned her speculative gaze back to Jane, "So what do you do for Stark Industries?"

Jane toyed with her chopsticks before she glance across the table to Darcy, who shrugged slightly as she sipped her water, "I'm an astrophysicist. Stark brought me in to consult on some projects for him, and allocated me lab space to work out of so I could collaborate with him on site."

Chuck arched a brow as he turned to Darcy, "You work for an astrophysicist?"

"I was Jane's intern for a couple years, needed six science credits to graduate from Culver," she and Jane shared a grin. "I thought the madness after New Mexico was more fun than settling down in some boring internship in D.C."

"And now you live in Stark Tower with the Avengers. How cool is that?"

Darcy saluted Serena with her glass, "Well, they don't always eat all the food, so we get along."

"And you've _never_ been hit on by Tony Stark?"

"While he's made it clear that he's noticed my ample," she rolled her eyes and gestured to her chest. "_That_, but Pepper's pretty much got that locked down tight. Go figure."

Blair and Serena laughed, "So Tony and Pepper Potts _are_ really dating, you're dating Thor, and it must be so cool to be dating someone from another planet, but Darcy, you're single?"

"For _so_ many reasons, including my last, stunningly mediocre relationship," she ignored the pitying look on Jane's face as she tamped down on the urge to talk about how terrible the Intern really was. "Besides, I've got enough on my plate with Charlie anyway."

Carter propped his elbows against the edge of the table, "What about Captain Rogers? Do you see much of him?"

"He actually lives across the hall. He's been in and out of the Tower since he moved in back in August."

And then Carter asked the question Darcy knew he's ask, but really wished he wouldn't:

"Has he ever mentioned anything about Sergeant Barnes?"

Resisting the urge to flinch, she felt Jane's foot touch the side of her leg as she shrugged a shoulder, "Here and there, but nothing that I didn't learn about when I was picking up my history minor at Culver."

It stung a bit, watching as Carter deflated before he managed to mask it away, but Darcy forced the feeling down, taking a long sip of the martini their waiter placed in front of her.

Serena squeezed Carter's hand and gently nudged her shoulder against his, "Hey," she kissed his cheek. "I'm sure Darcy will help us wrangle the stories out of him somehow."

"You know it," she held her drink up and Serena tapped her glass against it.

Sake and miso soup came next, and Jane delicately sipped at hers, "So what does Darcy need to know if she's going to spend the next fifteen years getting Charlie through the school system?"

"Everyone is trying to one-up one another, and none of it matters," Chuck downed a shot of sake.

"Also, don't sleep with your teachers," Blair added. "Or lie about sleeping with your teachers to the school board."

Brows hitting her hairline, Darcy resisted the urge to roll her eyes, "And here I thought I decided _against_ going into a life of politics."

* * *

After dinner, which was followed by drinks at a burlesque club that was apparently one of the first properties Chuck ever bought, and then a stop at an all-night diner for cheese fries, Jane and Darcy stumbled back into the Tower lobby sometime around 2 a.m.

"Oh my god Darcy, I can't believe you actually went on _stage_," Jane's giggles echoed through the dimly lit space that was empty save the bemused security staff, who waved as they skirted around the ten-food statue Tony insisted on including in the center of the lobby.

Victor von Doom had an eight-foot-tall statue of himself in _his_ New York offices, so Tony felt he had to counter.

He just ignored the fact that the man was _definitely_ a terrorist, and probably not someone he should try to emulate.

Cursing under her breath as she tripped against the dais, Darcy snorted, "Like I was going to say no to an easy hundred bucks. You know, they maybe rich and more than a little crazy, I mean, Chuck faked his death like, what, three times? That's totally Tony-status. But I think I like them."

"I hear you," Jane pressed her palm to the panel next to the elevator door, had to readjust when it beeped angrily before it finally chimed. "Thanks for dragging me out. We should take Thor back to that restaurant to do sake bombs."

"Oh my god, that would be the _best_," she slipped inside and slumped against the wall, exhaustion hitting her more than she felt like she was still drunk. "Home, please and thanks J."

The car began to rise, "Actually, Ms. Lewis, you're needed in Operations."

She blinked, and then squeezed her eyes shut, "_What_? J, it's like oh-dark-ew, and that means bedtime."

"I apologize Ms. Lewis. Steve was about to send for you."

"Ugh," she looked at Jane, who shrugged, and she grunted. "Fine, I guess."

They stumbled off the elevator and found a uniform-clad Steve waiting for them, "Before you start," Darcy held one hand up, and braced the other against the wall so she could kick off her shoes, the world going wonky a little until she was level again. "I am _so_ ready to pass out right now, so whatever it is, please, for the love of all that is holy, make it quick."

Sighing, Steve looked at Jane, "Could you get Darcy some coffee, please," he didn't wait for a response. "We recently got word of that there is a mid-level Hydra cell working out of an building in an office park in Connecticut. We're going to take it down."

"Sounds terrible," though Jane getting her coffee totally _didn't_, even if it was, well, whatever time it was. "What could you possibly need from me? I'm not exactly an Asgardian or a geriatric super soldier or a sniper or a lunatic billionaire."

Tony's '_I heard that_' echoed from somewhere behind Steve's shoulder.

He rolled his eyes before turning his serious gaze back to Darcy, "We need you to monitor us from Ops. Be our outside eyes when we go out tonight. This morning. Today."

She pointed to the ceiling, "I'm pretty sure Banner and JARVIS got that covered."

"Banner is coming with us, and I want a human eye on things. No offense," he added for the AI.

"None taken."

Eventually, Jane pressed a steaming mug of coffee in her hand, and she took a sip with a muttered thanks, "Let me get this straight. The Avengers are assembling, and you want _me_ sitting in on Ops."

"Yes."

She blinked, spared a look at Jane to make sure she was hearing the same thing, and then looked back up at Steve, "Are you concussed? I am not _remotely_ qualified to go anywhere near the team operations. I. am. a. lab. nanny. I'm cool with that, but _seriously._ Unqualified."

"Actually, you are. Clint mentioned that he was tasked to evaluate you for supervisory agent training before he was reassigned to go with Doctor Selvig. You probably would have been approached had SHIELD not, you know-"

"Wait, he was _what_?" She looked around for the man in question, but he was nowhere to be found. "That little shit never told me."

Before Steve could say anything else, another thought wormed its way through her tired brain, "No, but anyway, what about Maria? You know, the former Deputy Director of SHIELD and current Stark Industries _whatever_? She's about a million and a half times more qualified for this than I am."

"She's still upstate."

At the new training camp.

Right.

She sighed, and then narrowed her eyes when she realized that the tension radiating through Steve's shoulders was more than just the normal, pre-mission stress, and _when_ did she get so good at reading these people?

"You're not telling me everything and that's rude."

Grabbing her arm, Steve pulled her along with him down the hall before he pushed her into the doorway of one of the prep rooms.

Bruce and Thor were standing in front of one of the monitors and going over the blueprints of the building in question, while Clint was sitting cross-legged—or as cross-legged as he could with his funky left knee—loading the bottom section of his quiver with arrowheads while the tip-less shafts were spread out in piles around his legs, and Natasha and Tony sat a few feet away, heads bent over her gauntlets.

But that wasn't why Steve was keeping her from going to sleep after the long night out.

Because there was Bucky, sitting at the far end of the room, his back ramrod straight as his eyes scanned back and forth over the tablet in his hands.

And he was in uniform—it looked the very same gear, or a Tony-provided substitute, that he wore during the fight in D.C.—and for the first time she could think, the whole of his left arm was uncovered and shining under the fluorescent lights.

Darcy turned her wide eyes up to Steve, who was equally as tense as he watched Bucky, "No way."

"It's Hydra," he murmured, but Bucky probably heard them anyway, because _hello_, super hearing. "I couldn't keep him out of the action if I tried. This is what _he_ wants to do."

She pressed her hand to her mouth, startling at the gently touch to her elbow, and she saw Jane standing at her side, "Why me?" She looked back at Bucky, who was still steadfastly taking in the information on the tablet. "You're going to be right there with him. What can _I_ do?"

"Because he trusts you, and he'll follow my lead with the others, but he doesn't _trust_ them in combat yet," Steve squeezed her shoulder. "If something goes wrong, I want you to back us up. Back _him_ up."

"I really don't know how much use I'm going to be," she sighed. "But I guess I'm in. Where's the intel?"

"Darcy?"

She met Jane's concerned gaze, her jaw tight as she wordlessly urged her to understand that she _had_ to do this, "Can you run upstairs and grab me a change of clothes? And check on Charlie? Please?"

Jane sighed, and then nodded before turning back to the elevators, and Darcy looked back up at Steve, "Let's get started. You guys need to get in and out of there before sunrise, which means you need to leave _now_."

Dear lord, this week was _weird_.

* * *

Thankfully, Bucky didn't have any problems with the mission.

He actually seemed to _enjoy_ himself.

Like, he _really_ enjoyed himself.

"_That's one of my kitchen knives_," Tony's strained voice rang out over the comm., and Darcy adjusted the feed on the monitor she sat at to get a better view at what he was talking about—Bucky in the middle of a host of Hydra agents, slashing his way through their bodies. "_That is not a stabby thing Barnes! This is for _cooking_! Oh my god, I'm never going to be able to cook in my own kitchen again. Steve!_"

Darcy rolled her eyes, "You don't cook anyway, Stark_._"

"_I blame you for this, Ops!_"

Smirking at the monitor as Steve—no, _Captain America_—told him to cut the chatter, Darcy sat back in her chair and sipped her coffee.

This was either going to be the start of something really great, or something _absolutely horrifyingly terrible_.


	8. Chapter 8

In retrospect, Darcy realized she made a pretty _huge_ mistake when she agreed to help Steve and JARVIS cover the Avengers and Bucky during their first mission in the era of post-SHIELD Is Actually Full Of Nazis.

Because, two weeks later, Steve asked her to do it again.

Unmanned aerial incursion in the park.

Let's be real—no matter what the Latverian embassy insisted—they were totally Doombots.

Of _course_.

"Widow, you've got five more bogeys coming in from the southwest," Darcy flipped the view on the satellite monitor, the gray dots flaring red as they neared the Black Widow's flashing ID marker—an hourglass, because Stark thought he was just so damn clever.

Her expletive, followed by a round of gunfire, echoed on the speakers in the small operations suite she was ensconced in, and Darcy winced as the Captain's ID marker—the SHIELD, of course—moved in, and two of the angry red triangles flickered before they disappeared.

Leaving the pair to JARVIS to monitor, Darcy turned her focus to the video feed from the camera attached to Hawkeye's vest in time to see him fire off a volley of arrows at an incoming Doombot.

They each hit the target, and Darcy watched as it dropped from the skies before Thor intercepted with a well-placed swing of Mjolnir that sent it careening into a nearby building.

Wincing again, Darcy shot off a quick text to Pepper to be aware that the mayor's office was probably going to come calling sooner rather than later.

At a break in the action, Captain America's voice echoed through the room, "_How many more_?"

"_I've got five_," Iron Man's repulsors fired off twice. "_Make that three_."

Thor chimed in that there were four more in the air and that Banner—the Hulk—was dealing with two more on the ground.

Then, there was an explosion, and Hawkeye's video feed did a sickening flip, one of his grappling arrows arcing through the shot before it anchored on the building he had roosted on.

Darcy looked back at the screen monitoring the bogeys, one hand flying to the comm. in her right ear, "Thor, redirect and clear the skies over Hawkeye's perch. Hawkeye, can you get to ground?"

"_Not without breaking some bones_," she could see his hand like she was playing a first-person shooter as he fired off a couple rounds from the backup pistol he usually kept strapped to his leg.

"All right, hang in there for a second."

"_Funny_,_ Ops_."

She held back a snort as she typed a code into the computer so his camera feed swayed a little less and made her feel slightly less like she was going to throw up all over the millions of dollars of equipment, "Thor, pick him up when the skies are clear."

"_Momentarily, Ms. Darcy!_"

Captain America piped back up, "_Ops, call out the remaining bots_."

"Sixteen confirmed," she scooted her rolling chair back as she rattled off the locations. "Burn them up and head back home. I'm going to put the screws to the Latverian consulate and tell Doom where he can suck it."

"_Don't you dare_," Cap ordered.

At the same time Iron Man said, "_Make sure JARVIS gets it on video_."

Through her laughter, she heard the swish of the door opening behind her, and she spared a glance over her shoulder to see Bucky inch his way inside, his eyes focused on the monitors behind her, "How are they doing?" He asked when he noticed her gaze on him.

"The Latverian-constructed unmanned aerial incursion aren't as squishy as Hydra agents," she rolled her eyes at the mouthful the local police was spewing over the radio. "But they're totally toast."

Bucky nodded as he stepped up behind her, his gaze focused on the Hawkeye cam's view of Captain America as he threw his shield with enough force to bisect the bot he was facing.

She muted her comm., "You itching to get out there?"

From the side, she saw him swallow as he shook his head, "They're not Hydra. Told Steve if it's not, that I'm not," he broke off and gestured to the monitors, shaking his head again. "I'm not _that_."

"And that's okay," she patted his arm, her eyes flaring when she realized it was the metal one, but Bucky just looked down at her with a lopsided smile, and then he shrugged.

He stood for a few minutes, flinching every time Steve took a hit, and Darcy tracked the time until he finally shook his head, brushing his hand against her shoulder, "I just wanted to check in."

Nodding, she tried to force down the feeling of his hand on her shoulder until they _weren't_ on mission, and she looked at his back as he rushed out, "I'll have JARVIS call you when they're on their way back."

His muttered thanks was muffled by the hall, and Darcy keyed her comm. back on in time to see the Black Widow rip one of the bots' arms off before disabling it with her Widow's Bite.

"Hey JARVIS," she muttered out of the side of her mouth as she spared another glance over her shoulder before she returned her focus to her team. "Keep an eye on him. Let me know if he decides to bolt, or get drunk again. Or something."

"Of course."

Twenty-three minutes later, Darcy watched as Thor fried the last bot out of the skies and it landed in the middle of the street, "Eye in the sky reads all clear," her fingers flew over the keyboard as the team confirmed. "I'd call in a cleanup team, but Hill says they're still a work in progress, so you guys are kind of on your own."

Captain America looked into Hawkeye's camera, one hand adjusting his cowl, "_Let the local cops into the perimeter, but tell them to keep the spectators and the media on the outside. We're going to get started on seeing what we can salvage and bring back to the lab._"

"That long, and you're going to have to go to the air to get back to the Tower," she glanced at the clock as she sent the one-handed order to the NYPD's dispatch. "I'm going to run over and pick up the Kid. Pepper's on call if you need anything. I'll be back on in forty-five."

"_Thanks Ops._"

Courtesy of the fight, even though it was clear on the other side of town, city traffic was snarled more than usual, so Darcy darted off to Constance on foot, making it to the gates with minutes to spare.

Amidst the clusters of parents, Serena stood off to the side on the sidewalk, tapping away on her phone, and she arched a brow when she saw Darcy rush over, "Busy morning?"

She winked, because obviously the fight was already all over the news, "You know how it is: go team go," she stretched her arms back and popped her shoulders as she took a deep breath. "How's your day been?"

"Prepping for a photo shoot for Nate at the office. He needs new promos for the newspaper."

City darling Nate Archibald, who owned the New York Spectator despite the fact that he still looked like he was twelve years old, was quietly but quickly edging his way to the path of candidacy mayor of the city, likely the youngest in recent history.

Chuck and Carter may or may not have asked Darcy and Jane to put in a good word with Tony for his and Stark Industries' endorsement.

"Of course," Serena went on as she slipped her phone in the back pocket of her designer jeans tossed her long hair over one shoulder. "He's on my shit list right now."

Darcy arched a brow, "What did he do?"

"Eric is in town this week and Nate wrangled him, Carter, and Chuck into a pickup game yesterday at the park, trying to relive the glory days when they were all in high school. Or something," Serena rolled her eyes. "Carter sprained his ankle and my brother elbowed Chuck in the face. Blair is pissed, because he was supposed to take her to a benefit tonight. She refuses to be in public with him until his black eye goes away."

Letting out a bark of a laugh, Darcy shoved her hands in the pockets of the windbreaker she threw out as she sped out the door, "And that is exactly why Pepper didn't let Tony bring his boxing ring to the East Coast, _or_ let him rebuild the old one at the Malibu house."

Serena shook her head, and they shared an amused look, "_Men_," the echoed one another as the doors to the preschool opened up.

They scanned the crowd of tiny heads, and it didn't take long to spy Charlie and Mo walking hand in hand on Meg's heels, chattering brightly with one another, and Serena grabbed her phone and snapped a picture before the girls noticed them.

"Mommy!" Mo cheered when she saw them and steered Charlie over. "Mommy can Charlie come over and play?"

Charlie was nodding along, and once again, Darcy realized the fact that _Bucky's great-granddaughter_ wanted a play date, and she _really_ needed to talk to Steve and figure out what the hell they were going to do about that whole damn _thing_.

And as Mo turned her big, earnest eyes from her mother to Darcy, Darcy knew that it must have been hell for Serena and Carter to say no to her.

Because Margo Baizen may have been separated from Bucky by decades and quirks in genetics and whatever came from Carter's mother's and both of Serena's sides of the family, but Darcy was having the same kind of trouble she had when Bucky looked at her like she was the only thing in his world.

Especially when he didn't realize what he was doing it.

"Another day," she said as she dropped to a knee so she was at their eye level. "Charlie and I have some things to take care of this afternoon at home."

Both their small faces fell, "But Darcy-" Charlotte whined.

She cut her off with a look, "Not _today_ kid. I promise I'll call Serena and we'll figure something out, but I need your help today."

"With what?"

Darcy smiled and put her hand on Charlotte's shoulder as she stood, "_Things_, Kid. Now say goodbye to Mo," she looked at Serena and shrugged apologetically as the girls hugged. "Gotta go."

"You should come over for brunch next Sunday. We had a great time with you and Jane the other night."

"We did too. I'll call you later?"

"I'll be around."

* * *

As she expected, her attempt to get Steve to talk to her about the Bucky-Baizen situation was met with a wince, a hand on her shoulder, and an, "I know Darcy, we just have a lot going on right now with the team. We'll figure it out soon."

Darcy wasn't about to hold her breath, and she glared hard at his back as he walked away from her.

* * *

When Bucky came into the lab a few days after the Avengers took care of those Doombots and Pepper managed to talk the major off a cliff about all the property damage the fight caused, the first thing he saw was Jane sleeping at her desk with the side of her head mashed against an overturned box of Kashi.

"Uh, Doc," he was cut off with a quick hush, and saw Darcy at her own desk, using the foot propped against the drawers to rock her chair back and forth as she pressed a finger to her lips.

"Is she really sleeping?"

Darcy rolled her eyes, but there was a fondness there when she looked back at the sleeping woman, "She can literally sleep anywhere, which is a skill I'd actually love to have," she grinned. "She insisted on taking a power nap, but if she goes much longer, I'll call her knight in shining armor and have him take her to bed."

He walked in before the doors could chirp at him, and then rocked on his heels as he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his cargos—some of his decades-old habits were harder to break than others, especially when it came to his wardrobe choices—his gaze falling to the toes of his scuffed boots.

Darcy arched a brow when he stayed quiet, not that he was all that much more talkative on a normal day, "What's going on?"

"We're not going to uh," he gestured to Jane.

The sleeping woman let out a snort as she curled closer to the cereal box, and Darcy pressed her hand over her mouth to suppress a laugh, "She's been power napping for an hour, and I've officially given up on us getting any real work done today. We're good."

Bucky nodded slowly, his eyes focused on Jane, and Darcy arched a brow again as she stopped rocking her chair back and forth, propping her chin on the palm of one hand, "So?"

He was _still_ silent, then his hands left his pockets and he made some sort of gesture that probably made sense to him, muttering in Russian under his breath before saying, "Well I was sitting with the kid earlier, and-"

"And?"

Finally, he looked up and met her curious gaze, and there was something swimming in his eyes that made her still, her feet falling to the floor with a quiet thud, "And what?"

"'m worried?"

"About what?"

"About Charlie."

Pressing her fingers to her mouth, she stared up at him for a long minute, saw the concern, and even some nervousness in his eyes as if he was barely resisting the urge to pace, "You are worried about her," she tried the words aloud after repeating them a couple times in her head.

Still tasted kind of strange.

He shoulder dropped a fraction as he nodded once, swallowing thickly, "She's missing her mom something fierce, you know."

Darcy sighed, sparing a glance to the far side of the lab where Dum-E and U were tinkering with one of the freestanding units that removed Tony's Iron Man suit, "She's been having tantrums," she murmured, looking down at the tips of her fingers and rubbing them together. "Pretty much every night. I haven't been able to do anything to calm her down."

"Are _you_ okay?"

Waving a hand, she shrugged, "Thankfully she's got Mo to keep her distracted when she's at school or she'd be shitting bricks left and right," she rubbed her eyes before pushing the hand through her hair. "Not that it helps me all that much."

She shook her head and her brows furrowed, "How did you figure it out?"

"She was asking me about how words change when parents talk to their children in Russian," his voice was stilted, like he still wasn't sure she was okay with it, even after tall the weeks of language sessions that moved from the middle of the night to the early evening. "It's different from the way I talk to her, how you would talk to her, how Tasha would."

"So she's getting in on the action now too?"

"Better than when she looked at the kid like she was an alien."

Her brow arched, "So I'm not the only one who noticed that."

Bucky shrugged, "Tasha doesn't really know what an normal upbringing means," he sounded like he was considering each word so he didn't reveal too much of the woman's true origins, which she always kept so close to her chest. "She doesn't know how to relate to the kid. The language helps, I think."

"I am," she tilted her head. "_Not_ going to ask how you know all that."

He shook his head, "You should not," scratching the back of his neck, he looked from one end of the room to the other, as if Natasha was going to jump out at him at any moment, and then he shrugged. "Anything I can do to help?"

Darcy blinked at the abrupt segue, "With Charlie? But you already are."

"I mean, there anything else?"

"You want to?"

He shrugged, looking away like he was embarrassed, and he might actually have been, "I _do_ like the kid."

Nodding slowly, she tapped her chin and hummed before her eyes brightened, "You know what would make her feel better?"

"Her," Bucky cleared his throat. "Mother?"

She mirrored his wince, "How about something in the category of things I can realistically produce."

"Like?"

"An ice cream party while wearing the obnoxious glittery princess costumes JARVIS had shipped to us when you broke our apartment."

Bucky blinked, "_What?_"

"You heard me," she slung her bag over her shoulder, hopping off her chair and grabbing his hand. "You're totally coming with."

"I am _not_ wearing a costume."

Her eyes glittered as she looked up at him, "Try telling that to Charlie and get back to me."

They were in the elevator when Bucky coughed, "What about Jane?"

"Oh," she flipped her phone out of her pocket with her left hand, realized she was still holding Bucky's in her right, and she shook her head as she slowly tapped out a message. "Thanks for reminding me I'll let Thor know. And hey, if she wakes up in the meantime, she'll already have food."

"You are bizarre," the elevator continued to descend, and he looked down at their joined hands. "And I am _not_ wearing a costume."

"Yes you are. It's gonna be fine."

* * *

If ever asked, Bucky would categorically deny—under pain of torture if he had to, because there was absolutely nothing worse in the world than anything Hydra ever did to him—that:

A) He participated in whatever Darcy did in the privacy of her apartment to cheer Charlotte up,

Or

B) that he had anything to do with the blackout of the security camera in the apartment and the hallway outside during the very same span of time.

Nor did he have _any _idea where all that glitter came from.

No idea, whatsoever.

He _did_, however—and thus proving that he was most definitely weaker-willed than Hydra ever expected he could become—let Darcy keep the selfie she took of them wearing glittery flower crowns, on her fervent promise that she'd never show it to _anyone_.

Especially not Steve.

Charlotte appreciated all the effort though.

And that's really all that mattered.

* * *

No matter what Darcy did, she did it well, and it was definitely something she could trace back to her mother's ability—or technically that would be _inability_—to make a half-assed attempt at whatever _she _needed to do, before Carissa would ultimately give up and move on to half-ass something else.

She still wasn't sure what 'something else' Carissa had moved onto now that she dumped one daughter off on the other, but _whatever_, she didn't actually care.

The point was that whether it was raising Charlotte, keeping Jane fed and her phone charged and her desk sort of organized, or if it was being the human mind monitoring the Avengers from the Tower when they were on assignment, Darcy gave it her all because what was the point of giving anything else?

So Steve kept asking her to do it more and more often, whether it was for the real reason of being the calm voice in Bucky's ear when they were tearing Hydra cells down courtesy of some mystery source of Natasha's, or dealing with _not_ Doctor Doom, or even AIM or Roxxon's shenanigans.

And in the days and weeks that followed, it evolved into a full-time gig, especially now that Maria—on behalf of _whatever_ she did at Stark Industries—was _still_ stuck upstate with the fledgling Avengers Initiative Training Camp, taking the former SHIELD agents SI managed to scoop up after the fall and turn them into agents for an organization that wasn't a beard for a bunch of Nazis.

Which meant that Darcy got an office of her own in Operations—with four walls_ and _a door—and her workload grew _exponentially._

After a long night on headset with the team, she was buried in paperwork—because if there was one thing the Avengers Initiative was going to be, Steve insisted, it was _accountable_—she heard her phone ring from, well, somewhere, under the mountain of _everything_ piled on her new desk.

"It's Serena Baizen, Ms. Lewis," came JARVIS' intonation before she could ask.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, "Thanks J, can you answer and put it on speaker?" There was a beep. "Morning Serena, how was drop off? Any entertaining temper tantrums from those terror twins? Or their mother?"

There was a long pause, and Darcy wondered if she had beaten JARVIS to the punch, before Serena said, "_Hi Darcy. Have you seen the news at all today?_'

There was _something_ in her voice that Darcy couldn't quite make sense of over the connection, something tentative, concerned, and way out of the norm for the usually expressive woman.

She cast a glance around her desk and the neat but pervasive piles of paperwork and tablets that covered every inch of the large surface, only they were bigger since the team had just gotten back from a successful mission in Moscow mere hours before, which had given them time to write up their reports on the flight.

"Honestly Serena, I've been a little buried. What's up?"

On the other end of the line, Serena hummed, "_Well_," her voice was slow as she considered her words. "_It looks like someone managed to get some pictures of the Avengers' mission, and they're popping up online. I was watching the news this morning and they mentioned some unconfirmed reports about it_."

Darcy froze, then flipped the file she was working on to the side so far it ended up falling off her desk and scattering all over the floor, but she ignored it in favor of grabbing her phone, taking it off speaker and pressing it to her ear, "What did you see?"

She rocked her chair to the side so she could get to the monitor on her massive, mahogany, L-shaped desk, but gave up when she realized her keyboard was still buried and leaned back instead.

"_I'm not really sure_," Serena sounded very uneasy.

Dread pooled in Darcy's stomach because she knew _exactly_ what was going on.

"_There was a man with the team, fighting beside Steve, I mean, beside Captain America. I don't think anyone knows who he is, but Darcy, he-he looks like, and I mean _just_ like-_"

"Just like Carter," she finished as she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, her mind flashing a mile a minute, because she knew, she _knew_ this was going to happen. "Serena, has _Carter_ seen any of this?"

"_I don't think so. He's flying back from Dubai right now. He said he was going to get some sleep after his meetings and then was going to meet me at home when he got in._"

She sighed, "Okay, okay," she tried to put together a plan through the sudden throbbing at the front of her mind. "Look, if you can get him and bring him to the Tower when he lands, we'll explain everything. I just really need to talk to Steve first."

"_His flight doesn't get in for a couple hours_."

"Okay, great, text me the details. I'll see you soon."

She was about to hang up when Serena went on, "_But Darcy, what is all this? Why does Carter look like one of the Avengers? Is that man even an Avenger? No one's seen him before and I'm just so confused_."

"Look," she squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. "I just need to talk a couple things over with Steve before I can tell you anything. Even if I could, it's better if we explain it to you in person. I promise."

She could hear the hesitation in Serena's voice, "_Okay, I'll see you soon_."

Throwing her phone back on the desk, Darcy dropped her head in her hands, dragging her fingers through her hair as she got up, "JARVIS, I need you to track everything the news is saying about Bucky," she grabbed her tablet and left her office. "Let me know when they start making the connection to what happened in D.C., because they're too smart to miss it."

"Of course."

"And while I talk to Steve, fill Pepper in and have her get the SI PR department to put together a statement on his and Bucky's behalf. We have to put as much spin in our favor on this that we can."

"Shall I have them make arrangements for a press conference as well?"

"I hope it won't come to that. Of course," she muttered as the elevator doors opened for her as soon as she turned the corner. "That probably means it will. So yes. Quietly. I trust Pepper's judgment on which media entities to bring in. Even that Everhart woman."

"Of course, Ms. Lewis."

She fell against he side of the car and let her head fall against the metal wall with an echoing smack, "Ugh. Today of all fucking days."

* * *

"Hi, I need to talk to Steve," she said before Bucky could even open the door all the way.

Something shuttered over the light that sparked in his eyes, but Darcy barely had time to notice it as the man in question stepped out of his bedroom, Steve's hair still wet from his recent shower, "What is it?"

"I need to talk to you," she said again, her eyes pointedly flicking to Bucky, who stood at her shoulder and looked on at the exchange curiously. "And you don't get to run away from me this time. I'll have the Hulk sit on you if I have to."

It didn't look like Steve was getting her hint, looking curiously at her as he waited for her to go on, and her migraine grew to a nearly blinding throb, "Serena just called me," she growled through clenched teeth. "About _Moscow_."

Bucky let the door fall from his hand, and Darcy jumped when it clicked shut, but no one moved from the entryway, and he crossed his arms over his chest, "How does _Serena_ know about Moscow? We've been back three hours. Who is Serena anyway?"

His voice barely registered as she watched the realization finally, _finally_ flicker across Steve's face before he went pale, "How much does she know?"

"Right now only that there's something _to_ know. Someone got pictures of you guys and put them up online. I have JARVIS and Pepper working on response, but Carter's flying back from Dubai as we speak and it won't be much longer before he hears the news. I told Serena to bring him by as soon as he landed."

Her phone chimed, and she saw a text from Serena flash across the screen, "And we have just under four hours to prep. Less if Carter decides to wake up from his nap and check the news midflight."

Steve's frown deepened, and Darcy could _feel_ the curiosity radiating off Bucky in waves, "That's not a lot of time."

"Well it's out of our hands," she muttered, resisting the urge to snap. "If we had done _something_ about this sooner, we wouldn't be having this problem right now, but there's no use arguing about it."

He looked at her pointedly, "You know why we decided not to."

"Yeah, two _months ago_."

Bucky finally stepped between them, "What the hell are you two talking about? What's going on?"

"I don't want to do this in the hall. Come in."

"No."

They both looked at Bucky, who was glowering at them, "_What_ is going on?"

Darcy swiped a hand across her forehead, "It's nothing bad," she winced. "Okay, so that's not entirely true, since your face is about to be plastered just about everywhere, but the whole point _right now_ is that Steve and I have something that we need to tell you."

"You're not making any sense."

Groaning, she shouldered past them and talked into the living room, flopping onto the couch, "Because I am fucking _exhausted_," she snapped, looking up at the ceiling as they followed. "Your job ends when the mission does. You debrief, shower, eat your weight in carbs, and pass out. I don't. Hell, I never do, not that's _also_ not even the point right now."

"Then what _is_?"

She dropped her head in her hands, rubbing her temples until she felt something cool press against the side of her right hand, and she looked up to see Bucky holding out a glass filled with amber liquid. "Thanks," she muttered as she took a long drink.

It was five p.m. somewhere.

The Middle East.

Cairo, maybe.

The part of the world Carter was coming back from. _Fuck._

Eventually, she looked at Steve, who was perched at the end of the recliner to her left, while Bucky stood in front of the entertainment center, his hands fisted at his sides, and Darcy flicked her free hand at Steve to get him to—for the love of all that was holy—_start explaining_.

"Buck," Steve rubbed a hand through his hair, sending the wet spikes in all directions. "What do you remember about the night before you shipped out to London?"

"I _remember_ that not five minutes after I left you at the fair that you went and signed up to be some god damn science experiment," he spat. "You were always so fucking reckless. Really Steve, a grenade?"

Darcy usually thought it was hilarious that Bucky was _never_ going to let Steve live that down.

He was the most _himself_ when he was giving Steve shit for all the reckless things he did, especially in the pre-serum and early-serum days, and she loved the way Bucky's eyes lit up on those rare occasions.

But right now she kind of just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for a week.

Smiling ruefully, Steve nodded slowly, "But do you remember what happened before that?" He flinched when Bucky frowned. "It's okay if you don't. It is."

Bucky rubbed his forehead as he swallowed hard, his eyes flicking at Darcy for a second, but long enough for her to notice, "Took you to the World's Fair. Stark, _Howard Stark_, demonstrated his flying car. We were with a couple gals."

Steve looked at Darcy, hesitating, and she rolled her eyes as she took another sip, frowning when the glass emptied far too quickly.

Leave it to the Star Spangled Man With A Plan to make _her_ rip the Band-Aid off.

Darcy resisted the urge to throw a Charlotte-level tantrum in his general direction, took a deep breath, and asked, "The girls," she swallowed hard to force her next words out. "Do you remember their names?"

His eyes dropped to his feet, but she knew he wasn't seeing his toes or even the floor he stood on, "I think they rhymed," he pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. "It was Connie and Bonnie? Yeah. Connie and Bonnie."

"Yeah," Darcy nodded as she looked at Steve, who was staring resolutely down at his hands, and she sighed loudly, but he didn't look up.

"Why is it important?" Bucky asked, looking between them, his tone demanding answers. "What the hell does this have to do with that Serena woman?"

Darcy waited for Steve again, but he still didn't look up, and she flexed her fingers around her glass, resisting the urge to throw it at his head, so she placed it heavily on the coffee table, but the resounding clang did nothing to rouse him from his thoughts.

"Because," she gnawed on her lower lip to keep from saying what she shouldn't have to tell him, but Steve still refused to look at either of them. "Because nine months after that night, Connie had a son. _Your_ son."

Bucky's jaw actually dropped.

Darcy's fingers tensed into a fist as she waited for _something_, for him to flip out, run away, deny it, but all he did was stand there.

And he should have been told _months ago_.

"Are-are you sure?"

His voice was pained, a raspy whisper, and Darcy wanted to throw up the alcohol roiling in her stomach.

"Bucky," Steve's voice—and fucking _finally_—was gentle. "Your grandson could be your clone."

Slowly, his mouth worked around the words, "My," he narrowed his eyes. "You _know_ who he is?"

Darcy rubbed the back of her neck with both hands. "You know that kid Charlie won't shut up about? Margo Baizen?"

"_Why _does that matter?"

"Because Mo's father Carter, the CEO of Baizen International, is Connie's grandson. _Your_ grandson. I did some digging when we found out, and after she found out you died, Connie married Walter Baizen to, among other things, avoid the stigma of being an unwed mother. Matthew Stevens was eighteen months old at the time. Walter gave him his name, made him heir to his empire."

Bucky shook his head, "How long have you known?"

Flinching, Darcy looked at Steve for help, and Bucky repeated in a low growl that almost made her jump, "_How long_. Have you. _Known_?"

"Serena, that's Carter's wife, introduced me to him at the parent-teacher reception at the Empire, so right after school started," Darcy winced again as the words came out in one big rush. "September. We've known since September. I'm sorry Bucky."

That admission was enough to get him to start pacing back and forth in front of them, muttering under his breath in a flurry of languages too quickly for Darcy to keep track, "You didn't tell me," his voice was barely above a whisper. "_Why_ didn't you tell me as soon as you knew?"

Finally, _finally_, Steve got up, intercepting Bucky on his circuit and placing his hands on his arms, "Because when we got back to the Tower that night, something triggered you so badly you thought you were back in Russia in the sixties working with the Red Room, and we had to bring Tasha in to talk you down. After that, we decided to wait until you were a little more stable before we told you that you had family here."

Bucky whipped Steve's hands off him, "And I've _been_ stable," he started pacing again. "I've been on fucking missions with you. I've been here for _months_. How much more like Bucky do you want me to be, because I'm not going to get much closer to him. _Not ever_."

"Bucky."

"No!"

He whirled around, slamming his left hand against the wall and leaving a fist-sized hole, "You shouldn't have kept this from me! How am I supposed to have time to accept this when they're going to be here in hours demanding answer that I don't _have_?"

"Listen, Buck-"

"You had _months_ to accept that Peggy grew up, grew old, and I only have _hours_ to accept that my night with Connie and Bonnie led to, led to a future I can," he pressed a hand over his eyes and took a harsh, shuddering breath before his shoulders dropped fractionally. "_Fuck_, I don't even know. I'm just not ready. Not for this. Not this quickly."

Scrubbing her fingers over her face and resisting the urge to cry, because she was sad and exhausted and overwrought, Darcy stood and stepped in Bucky's path and held her hands out.

Bucky glared and tried to walk around her, but she sidestepped back in front of him, "We fucked up, and that's on us," she waved her hands, waited for him to take them, and he finally did, scowl firmly on his face as he looked at her. "If you're not ready to meet them, then you don't have to meet them today. We can take care of this."

"It's not your job, Darce."

She squeezed his fingers, their hands hanging between them while Steve looked on, "Trust me, it is. We would have never figured this out had I, that'd be me, not decided to send Charlie to Constance. So I will help Steve, because apparently he's forgotten how words work, and we'll figure this out."

Frowning down at her, Bucky flipped his grasp on her left hand and curled his fingers around her wrist, the tips pressing against her pulse, "Darcy, _you_ need to rest."

"I'll sleep when I'm dead. Or when Jane needs me to collate paperwork in the lab. It's going to be fine."

With a final squeeze, she dropped his hand and spun around, "Now," she clapped her hands together. "I am going to prep for Serena and Carter, _you_ are going to, I don't know, hide," she looked at Steve. "And _you_ sir, are going to pull this stick out of your ass and beat yourself with it. I am a thousand and a half percent done with you right now, _mon capitan_. Be ready to talk to them when they get here, I'm _not_ doing this alone."

Steve winced and looked back down at his toes as Darcy spun on her heels and headed out, but was halfway to the door when she turned back and poked her head into the living room where Bucky was still gaping, "Hold on. Connie _and_ Bonnie?"

A pained noise clawed from Bucky's throat and his ears turned red.

She put her hands up, "I'm not judging. Go you from the forties. I _swear_."

"_Darcy_," Steve sounded appalled.

She rolled her eyes, "Fine, fine. I'm out."

In the middle of the hall, she paused, heard muffled voices from inside their apartment before a door slammed.

Pressing a hand to her forehead to try to stop the incessant throbbing, Darcy sighed and shuffled over to her own front door.

This couldn't possibly end well.


End file.
